The Shadow Attacks and some other stuff happens
by nicholasakira
Summary: Parody. When Shai'tan invades, it's up to an extraordinarily lazy Rand to have the day saved for him. Meanwhile, Mat is kidnapped, Nyaneve launches herself into space and swears to destroy the Wheel of Time itself.
1. In Relation to Nyaneve's Chest

The Wheel of Time turns, and ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth and even myth is long forgotten when the age that gave it birth comes again. In one age, called the third age by some, an age yet to come, an age long past, a great yawn escaped the mouth of the Creator. This yawn was not a beginning. There are neither beginnings or endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time, especially endings. There are only sequels.

"Alright!" one of the Creator's bodies announced to the set. Around him, was the courtyard of the White Tower. The Creator's many bodies shuffled around the set, preparing the next act of the Wheel of Time. People stood, frozen in tableau, while the Creator spun the threads of time so that everything would happen properly. The Creator's many bodies arranged people, lit candles, and otherwise did the logistics of preparing the world for when the production began.

"Alright!" said the Creator's many bodies again, "quiet on set! Start the camera's rolling in…"

"Sir?"

One of the Creator's many bodies was dragging a train of wheeled cages behind him. He stopped beside this Creator's other body. "Sir, where do we want all this Amazonian feminism?"

The cages he dragged were full of women, possibly the only people, other than the Creator's many bodies, who were moving. The courtyard was filled with statue-stiff Aes Sedai and Warders, but these women were moving. Some were freakishly muscled and some wore queenly crowns. Others wore distinguishing medallions and headdresses alongside other symbols of authority. Most were just looking around them with a stare as cold as ice, as if to say "the world belongs to me." Others were dressed as warriors, heavily muscled, and swinging heavy swords and spears around them. Others were repeating the same phrase over and over again.

"A man is like an oak. He resists the wind and breaks. A woman is a willow, moving with the wind!"

"The weaker sex is men!"

"A woman never needs a man!"

"Women are smart, men think with the hair on their chests!" Not one appeared to realize they were in cages.

"Gee," the Creator looked over the cages. "I didn't know there'd be so much."

"We've also got a massive load of misandry…"

"Put it with the feminism!"

The Creator looked for his body that held the script. "Hey!" he shouted, upon realizing his body who held the thick script for what was to come was sharing it with a young female prophet.

"See?" the body was whispering to the prophet, "this is what will happen." The prophet was flipping through the script and nodding.

"I'll share this with all my online buddies," the prophet answered.

"Just be ambiguous. I don't want any spoilers…" the Creator's body froze and snatched the script back from the prophet before the other body reached him. In a snap of the fingers, the prophet vanished.

"Do we have enough spaces for all this feminism and accompanying misandry?" asked the Creator to the other.

"There's not enough room in the script," answered the other. "You'll just have to pile it everywhere." The other body nodded and returned to the cages.

"Just scatter it everywhere. Fit it wherever there's a flat space. Cram it into every nook and cranny."

Moments later, the set was prepared. The bodies all coalesced into a single figure, who looked out across the courtyard.

"Quiet on the set! Three! Two! One! ACTION!"

'Argh,' thought the reader. 'The prologue is 75 pages long.'

….

The Salad Bar nursery was filled to the walls with babies. They covered the floor, the tables, even the ceiling fans with their little wiggling bodies. Babies, babies, babies, everywhere. They were all boys, cooing in the way that babies did. It would be cute, were the nursery not in a furnace.

Nyaneve closed the door and turned on the heat. The collective death-screams of one hundred baby boys cried out from the nursery, now a charnel, as fire superheated the air. She turned smartly to face Egwene, who was approaching from the other side of the hallway.

"I sure do hate men," Nyaneve remarked, folding her arms beneath her breasts. Egwene took little issue with this. Then again, she'd taken little issue with being dragged away from her home and family to serve in a life of adventure without so much as a proper goodbye. Now that Egwene never though of her family anymore, it seemed doubtful that she'd ever had one.

Nyaneve was wearing a blue dress with a swooping neckline that showed the tops of her breasts very keenly. It was a neckline that would attract many eyes from men, and many hits, from an angry Nyaneve. She was beautiful in it. It showed a lot of bosom.

"Nyaneve, I need help," Egwene answered. "It's the Aes Sedai. The rebel Aes Sedai who fled to the city of Salad Bar, where we are now, are asking me to become the Amyrlin Seat!" Nyaneve nodded, touching her chin to the chain around her neck, which supported the ring that Lan gave her, hanging as it did between her breasts.

"Why? Those fool women are as dumb as men," spat Nyaneve in spite. She grabbed her braid and gave it a tug. "You're what? 18? They're many centuries old, some of them. You've been an apprentice for two or so years. You're not even a full sister. You know little about commanding people, you've not travelled nearly as far as a lot of the Aes Sedai and you're as inexperienced as a college girl." Nyaneve shook her head at the foolishness of the Salad Bar rebels. "Maybe Elaida's right." Elaida was, of course, the Aes Sedai who'd taken over the White Tower. Nyaneve threw her ponytail across her chest, which swung across her breasts.

"I know, I've not a lot of experience," answered Egwene. "but there's no choice. I cannot decline it. What do I do?" Egwene gestured to her own clothes: a tight-necked stole with golden buttons. "I don't show nearly as much bosom as you."

"Show more. You'll do better the more you show."

"What else?"

"Learn to make them hop when you say 'toad.' I think you'll find things will become easier then." Nyaneve turned around, pointing her breasts at the door.

"Don't go!" Egwene shouted. Nyaneve's breasts turned to her. "I need experience! Where do I get some?"

"There's no place you can get some in so short a time," replied the head that was perched on the neck over Nyaneve's breasts. "Just other's to help you. I've got to wash pots and pans." Egwene bit her lip, which hung one foot higher than and six feet away from Nyaneve's breasts.

"I'll try," Egwene fled the hallway that contained Nyaneve's breasts.

…

On the other side of the book, a great problem was arising. The Waste was on the advance, the armies of shadowspawn ready to advance on a ruthless path of conquest into the lands of...

The lands of…

"WHAT'S THIS WORLD CALLED?" asked the Dark One's voice to the gathered Forsaken, who stood in the Pit of Doom (one or two thousand miles north of Nyaneve's breasts).

"Never did see a name on the map," remarked Asmodean. "By the way, I've had enough of this evil. No more shadow, no more death. I wanna play the harp." The Forsaken watched in dismay as Asmodean gated away. Now there were 12.

"What it's named matters not!" cackled Moghidean. "As long as there's people to lie to."

"And heroes to undress," added Graedal, who, even now, had not finished her pole-dancing routine. Oddly, the male Forsaken stood closest to her.

"I don't care about skin or pleasure!" howled Sammael. "I want to challenge Rand! I can see it now: an epic showdown of colossal proportions. He will lead an army to Illian and a seven year siege will follow. It will culminate in a clash of swords over the tall tower of Illian's palace. He and I will fight with swords while lightning streaks across the sky and epic music plays. It will be…it will be better than the final fight in the third Matrix movie. It will be, like, so much better. Surely the pattern will weave it so, and it will be fifty pages long…"

"SILENCE!" bellowed the Dark One. "I MUST HAVE MY VICTORY! SOON THE LANDS OF…OF THE WORLD WILL FALL TO ME! I WILL MAKE THE WORLD IN MY OWN IMAGE!"

"Gee," mumbled Rahvin to Graedal, "that's vain, even for us."

"I HEARD THAT!"

"So what are your plans, great lord of the dark?" cried Ishamael to the Pit of Doom. "How can the 13…12 Chosen serve you?"

"FIRST, THERE IS SOMETHING IMPORTANT YOU MUST DO. THERE IS A DAGGER! THE DAGGER CAME FROM SHADAR LOGOTH. IT WILL GIVE ME GREAT POWER TO INVADE THE WORLD WITH. I LAST REMEMBER IT WAS TAKEN BY ONE OF THE DRAGON'S FRIENDS!"

"Stop speaking in all-caps," Moghidean scolded. "It makes you look childishly angry."

"WHO SAID THAT! IS THAT YOU MOGHIDEAN? LET ME SEE YOUR FACE!" the Dark One roared. All eyes turned to Moghidean, who was looking as smug as a bully sitting over a conquered victim.

"You don't need to see my face," she insisted, waving her hand.

"I DON'T NEED TO SEE YOUR FACE."

"I'm not the Chosen you're looking for."

"YOU'RE NOT THE CHOSEN I'M LOOKING FOR!" The Dark one snapped out of the spell while the other forsaken looked on in awe. Moghidean giggled. "IN ANY EVENT…" the chamber filled with the sound of a musical bell. It rang twice before the Dark One spoke again. A mechanical beep ended the musical bell.

"HELLO?" asked the Dark one. "OH, HI CTHULHU…I'M SPEAKING TO THE CHOSEN." The forsaken looked at one another awkwardly while they waited the Dark one to finish with his cell phone. "THIRTEEN OR SO. OH YES, THEY'RE VERY SCARY. HM? UH, NO I STILL DON'T WANT TO JOIN THE ELDER GODS. NO, YOU SEE, I NEVER HAD THE FACE FOR TENTACLES OR THE BACK FOR WINGS." Ishamael took the time to check his blackberry (a VERY black blackberry) while Sammael continued to whisper about how great his duel with the Dragon would be. Lanfear and Graedal softly argued over who would get to "keep" the Dragon once the world had fallen and Balthamel fell asleep.

"FINE, JUST TELL THE…WHAT? WHEN? WELL, TELL SAURON THAT I ONLY BORROWED ONE OF THE MOUNTAINS OF DHOOM FROM HIM AND I'LL GET IT BACK TO HIM AS SOON AS I'M DONE WITH IT." Pause. "WELL IF SAURON THINKS ALL THE MOUNTAINS OF DHOOM ARE HIS THEN HE CAN HIKE HIS METAL, BIG-SCREEN BACKSIDE INTO THE BLIGHT AND PICK IT UP HIMSELF.

Ishamael and Rahvin started to play a few rounds of 007.

NEXT TIME YOU SEE HIM, TELL HIM THAT I STILL THINK HE'S A LOSER FOR SELLING HIMSELF TO A MOVIE. HE EXPLODES AFTER LOSING A FEW FINGERS. HA! WELL, MY SERVANTS WOULD NEVER DIE IN SUCH EMBARRASSING, LOW-ACTION WAYS. NOT ONE FORSAKEN WILL GET CHEAP-SHOTTED TO DEATH, NO SIR. THEY'RE INVINCIVBLE, SEE?"

Aginor was drawing swirls on Balthamel's sleeping face with his crayons.

"NOW, NEVER INTERUPPT ME WHEN I'M TALKING TO THE CHOSEN EVER AGAIN. I DON'T KNOW HOW! YOU'RE CTHULHU, USE THE MAGIC POWERS THAT YOUR AUTHOR GAVE YOU." The Dark one hung up.

At that moment, the Dark one forgot what they'd been talking about. There was such a huge space of time between what was being said that the conversation had totally lost its flow. Any words the Forsaken now spoke about what they were talking about before would be meaningless. This problem was not exclusive to the Dark one. It happened all over the world.

"So…this dagger?" Lanfear asked, quickly summing up what they'd been talking about.

"RIGHT!" bellowed the Dark one. "THE DAGGER MUST BE FOUND, STOLEN AND BROUGHT TO ME. I WANT ALL OF YOU TO GO AND FIND IT FOR ME. FIRST ONE TO FIND IT BECOMES SECOND-IN-COMMAND."

The Forsaken rushed from the chamber, pushing and shoving to be the first outside. One by one, the Forsaken gated to all corners of the world, searching for the dagger of Shadar Logoth.

…

Ebou Dar (closer to and lower than Nyaneve's breasts than the Pit of Doom) used to have a Ogier stedding near it. Now, the stedding was gone. The Ogier who'd lived there had named the place "Los Angeles." It had since been replaced by Ebou Dar, a stinking city filled with crime and gangs. Given the way things were going, Ebou Dar would not last long.

The Seanchan army marched through the streets of the conquered city. They had helmets like the ones the samurai wore. They rode animals that looked like they'd been made from clay, by a child who wanted to make a dinosaur but hadn't quite done it right. All around them, their militaristic mastery was grinding the conquered city under its foot. They were strong! They were invincible!

"What is this?" snapped a disgusted Seanchan at a poster that hung on the nearest wall. "BEWARE THE SEANCHAN" it read. Depicted upon it was a warrior in plate mail who wore a giant ant head.

"It looks like a local warning of our invasion," replied the other Seanchan. "They…didn't quite get the head right." The other man fingered the frills rising out of his samurai helmet. "These look like antenna sir, maybe someone described our helmets as looking like the heads of insects."

"I wouldn't doubt it. But now they see us for what we are, how badass we look, and they will never make the same mistake." The Seanchan laughed as he circled the corner to face another poster. It depicted the victory over the whitecloaks during the failed first wave. The whitecloaks were dying under the power of the da'maine. However, the ranked legions of Seanchan were drawn improperly.

"Ant heads! Grasshopper heads! Wasp heads!" cried the Seanchan lord in dismay. "NO!" they looked stupid. They looked so very stupid. "Get rid of these damned frills!" In anger, he stormed into the nearest building for some solitude.

"It is good to be beneath Nyaneve's breasts."

The Seanchan lord snapped to attention upon seeing he was not alone. The menacing, yet extraordinarily calm figure in the corner had the look of a raven about him. "What is your name?"

"Turak," the Seanchan lord answered.

"Turak. I am looking for the dagger of Shadar Logoth. Where is it?" the raven-like man answered. "I see we are both men of extraordinary tastes. I like dancing girls, so do you, eh? How about lending your fellow man a hand." The man reached out a friendly hand. "Rahvin, by the way."

"I've heard about the dagger," Turak replied. "The scouts flew over there and saw someone with the dagger." Rahvin cleared his throat.

"Are you guys Chinese, Indian or Japanese?" he asked timidly, "I never could tell…"

"We are Seanchan!" Turak snapped, "we've got an empire across the sea! We are many and one! We are…"

"I know full well what you are," Rahvin paused. "Flying scouts? Riding the flying…torraken?"

"To'raken," replied Turak. "But the scouts rode raken. Of course, I needed a sul'dam and a damane's power to understand what they were saying."

"What?"

"I needed people linked with an a'dam to understand the scout, because the scout was flying overhead and shouting the news down to me. I needed to voice amplified." Rahvin's eyes lit up.

"Ah, Adam. I didn't think that one got this far west. Adam was always such a bizarre figure, the quirks and jokes he pulled. He must have found a strange way to get the raken down. But, well, what can you say." Turak grumbled.

"An a'dam killed my brother."

"Really? I did not know Adam to be violent. If you ever see him, send him to me." Outside, a sul'dam walked by, with her damane. "And send me a few of those leash things. They look like good…er…toys." Rahvin's eyes floated away like a schoolboy's as he daydreamed about collared women. Turak rolled his eyes. Some false a'dam were indeed sold as arousal toys to couples with fetishes back in Seanchan.

"Well…yes I will. As for the dagger, the scouts said it was taken by a fellow in a green coat and a cowboy hat. He was last seen headed to Salad Bar," Turak remarked. Rahvin gated away.


	2. The Forsaken have a bad day

Gawyn had just gone through a long day with the younglings. Practice was long and hard and now he was putting away his gear. He threw his practice swords into his bag, peeled off his clothes and stepped into the shower. He reached for the chrome shower lever and turned on the hot water. He moved the towel on its rack aside, revealing Lanfear and Graedal.

"AH!" he cried, turning off the shower and wrapping his waist in the towel.

"We're looking for something," Graedal began, "we think you might know where it is." Gawyn ran to his bag, but was pursued by both Forsaken. "Are you Sir Gawain?"

"Gawyn," he answered, "who is…"

"Nevermind," Lanfear interrupted. "There's a dagger. We think it's in the hand of a guy named Cauthon…"

"Cauthon!" Gawyn stammered, "Cauthon totally pwned me in a match of swords-vs-spars. He bashes my head with his staff, I get a concussion and have to go through weeks of recovery. I lost half my memory. I miss months of study and what happens? My swordsmaster stand there and is all like 'oh, the greatest swordsman in the world was once beaten by a guy with a quarterstaff.' Yeah, right. Spare us the history lesson pops, I need a brain surgeon." Gawyn shrugged. "I got my revenge. I knifed the guy in this very locker room. It's a good thing Elaida chose to depose Siuan then, or I'd have had no way to make it look like anything but murder." Gawyn pulled on his clothes. "Of course, now that I'm humiliated and babysitting some stupid younglings, I can't get any girls. My only choice is this stupid bitch named Egwene al'something. Light, she's a brainless, compulsive liar who delights in secrets, like a ****ing five year old. She can't even give me proof that my beloved sister is still alive. She won't even let me know where she is. Does she delight in giving me nightmares about Elayne?"

"Would you like to come with me?" asked Graedal. "We can have a lot of fun together."

"Fun!" echoed fifty voices from behind the nearby lockers. "Lots of fun with Graedal." Gawyn looked around.

"You snuck some of your servants in here?" he asked. Graedal was beside him in a moment.

"Yes. And you can join them. I'll put your lovesick little heart right next to Edward Cullen…"

"Graedal!" snapped Lanfear. "Stick to the point. Where is Mat Cauthon?"

"Salad Bar," replied Gawyn. "And if you see my sister, tell her I love her very much and I'm sick with depression over where she is and it's not fair to me to keep secrets from me and…" Graedal and Lanfear gated away.

"No!" stammered Gawyn. "This, around the time I lost my mommy to Rand Al'thor." Then Gawyn doubled over and sobbed. "M…m…mommy! Mo…mommy!"

…

The air was thick with a fat smoke. It smelt like grass to be frank, fresh cut grass. Sammael also began to feel hungry as he worked his way into the Ogier stedding. Such a strange word "stedding." The ogier had originally jumped onto the old tongue bandwagon and called it a "ste'dd'inga'sooph'''''ai'gla'ndes'saddoodle''''''," which had more apostrophes than any other word in any tongue. But even the old tongue could only have so many apostrophes.

"You know," grumbled a weary ogier woman that Sammael walked past, "why is there only one language in the world? Why do we speak the same words as the monkeys?" She looked promising. As Sammael squeezed through the trees and sat by the woman he began to take in his surroundings.

Everyone wore sunglasses, with long ropy hair and messy clothes that were as colourful as a tinker's outfit. Some of them sat on rugs and played banjos and some roasted sausages over open fires. A lot of them wore the peace symbol. Sammael chose this woman to be near because she was actually speaking. The others were just moaning and braying.

"I'm looking for the dagger of Shadar Logoth," Sammael said to the woman, who was now rolling on the ground next to a band of squat musicians. Sammael sure was hungry.

"Yo, peace," huffed the woman, sitting up. "Shadar Logoth is a bad place. It violates human rights, bro! It is so suspicious of its people. It conducts unwarranted searches on its own people, carries out chargeless arrests and discriminates. It discriminates bro! Shadar Logoth is so full of suspicion and it wages shallow, criminal wars all in the name of suspicion and fear bro! It stomps all over Vietnam. And for what? Witch hunting those commies bro? We gotta get Shadar Logoth out of Vietnam, bro!" She wasn't much, but she was the best this forest-city of hairy idiots had yet shown him.

"Where is the dagger…?" Sammael began.

"Vietnam, bro! Get out of Vietnam bro!"

"Where in Shai'tan's name is the dagger!"

"Woah!" one of the band members, the harpist, stood up. Sammael blinked in horror.

"Asmodean?"

"That's right, bro," replied the former Forsaken. "I'm tired of doom and gloom, bro. I want to just be happy. Play my harp. Live with nature," he emphasized "nature." He emphasized it heavily. "Love and live and grow trees. Make love, not war, man!" The cry was taken up by the whole stedding.

"MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR!" Sammael helped his friend to his feet.

"I think we've had enough of crazy ogier tree-huggers," Sammael muttered. He was secretly grinning and rubbing his hands together in sickly ambition. Where these hippies saw trees, he saw…progress. Cities, castles, capital! Let's see how long these fools could hold when he bulldozed their stedding. "Did you find out anything?"

"The dagger, it was taken from Shadar Logoth!" Asmodean blathered. "It's a conspiracy! The government is lying to us. They want to use it to kill the trees. We've got to protect the trees bro!" Sammael stomped his foot.

"Where did the Dragon's fri…I mean, the henchmen of the government take the dagger?" He hoped there was some vestiges of his fellow Forsaken inside the shell of flesh he now held in his hands.

"It's a government conspiracy!" Asmodean cried. Sammael grabbed Asmodean by the ankles and hoisted him over his head. He brought him down like a hammer, bashing his head into the ground. Up and down he went, bashing Asmodean with all his strength. Sammael dropped Asmodean's ankles and leaned down.

"Where is the government hiding the dagger?" he demanded.

"Salad…bar," hissed Asmodean. Sammael gated away. Asmodean grabbed his ankle before he could disappear and was dragged behind the other Forsaken.

…

"Alright you two, spread out!" Be'lal shouted. Mesanna and Semirhage dove into the pile of angreal like children into a ball pit. Be'lal held back his outrage when the two women began throwing angreal at one another.

"Careful with tho…AH!" Be'lal ducked down as an angreal landed near his feet and activated, firing a red beam of fire dangerously close to him. "We're here for clues. And don't make noise. The garrison in the Stone of Tear cannot be disturbed."

"Relax, no one knows we're down here," replied Semirhage. A passing angreal knocked a nearby door open, revealing the chanber where the Cadinsor was being kept. Be'lal closed the door in a moment.

"What was that?" asked Mesanna, craning to look.

"It is Cadinsor," replied Be'lal. "It is a powerful tool, built for a man. The Sword that is not a Sword: a great manly tool. It can cause great ruin whenever it is brought out of its sheath."

"Bow-chicka-bow-wow," Mesanna said. Be'lal rolled his eyes.

"Just search. We don't have all day…stop throwing angreal at each other!" Be'lal barked. He picked up a random angreal, a long hard cylinder, and activated it. From the things end shone a bright light from a glowbulb. "Ah, a working fla'shl'ight. It's type has not been seen during the age of legends," Be'lal praised. "Come." The other two forsaken stopped throwing angreal and followed Be'lal further into the depths of the cellar, filled with angreal.

"There sure are a lot of these caches lying around. There's one in Ebou Dar too," Semirhage remarked. A circle of illumination passed over the heaped junk, affording the forsaken glimpses of statuettes and curious pieces of art. "Ah! This!" She flashed over to a curious white box and turned it on. The cellar filled with lively music and a man's singing voice while a small sign popped out of a trapdoor on the box's top.

"Do you suppose he's speaking about a lover?" asked Mesanna, listening to the singing.

"I believe he is," replied Semirhage. "Isn't that sweet? He'll never give her up. Or let her down." She squinted at the sign. "It says someone named Rick has rolled over onto us...I think." The other two forsaken shrugged in blissful ignorance and kept going.

"What about this?" Be'lal fell upon a flat crystal screen. Touching it, the screen lit up to reveal a moving image of two girls and one cup. "It cannot be!" gasped Be'lal in disgust, "Dark One burn my soul! They were…AH!" he threw the screen into a corner before the others could see it.

"How about this angreal?" asked Messana, turning over a large black square of opaque glass. Activating it, the square lit up, revealing an image stored inside its crystalline depths.

"It says 'goat,' or…" the image changed. "AH!" Messana hurled the angreal away. "Hands! Hands, they were…AH!"

"Doesn't this cellar carry anything that isn't stupid or disgusting?" asked Be'lal in disbelief. "Maybe we'll have to go to the Dark One empty-handed. Semirhage shook her head.

"No, there!" she pointed out a standing statue of a monk with crystal eyes, revealed in the light of Be'lal's flashlight. Activating it, light shot from the eyes. Forming in the air where the light shone was a hovering image. It was a large man in glasses swinging a stick.

"A hologram! Now it all makes sense. Those disgusting images…it is tool of the age of legends," whispered Be'lal in awe. The image changed to a similar man, from the waist up, swinging his arms to the tune of a song that Be'lal didn't understand. "What?" he asked, his awe fading. It changed to a boy falling from a log into a river, then a man on stage dancing to different songs.

"What?" asked Semirhage. The new image showed a zombie confessing a liking for turtles, then it changed to a whale exploding, then to a Nazi speaking in another language, with subtitles appearing across his chest revealed his anger over stolen waffles.

"The intur-net. Or in the old tongue, the _idiost paradis,_" admitted Messana. "A foolish invention from the age of legends, where idiots went to waste their time. Some of the worst, most ignorant intur-net users of all were the ones who wrote stories lampooning their favourite books and then uploaded them to be read for free by strangers." Be'lal nodded, remembering. Suddenly he didn't miss the age of legends.

"I can't believe I ever liked it…wait!" Be'lal stopped the stream of images. "Look!" An image of a muscled warrior in a red cape kicking a smaller man into a hole remained frozen in time. With a mental nudge with Saidin, Be'lal reviewed the previous image.

"Matrim Cauthon!" laughed Semirhage. "It's him, stealing from Shadar Logoth!" Squinting at the image, Be'lal saw Mat was running from the city with the dagger, to join a group headed up the east road.

"That road leads to one place only," Be'lal roared in triumph. "Salad Bar!" They turned around to leave. As they turned around, the angreal's light disappeared. Sensing danger, the forsaken turned around.

"Did you deactivate it?" asked Messana. Be'lal approached the statue and touched it gingerly.

"It's still on. Can you feel it?" he said to the other two. He touched it again and it began to make noise.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

"What the fu…!"

BOOOOOM!

…

It was time to crown Egwene as the Amyrlin Seat. The hall that served the Aes Sedai in Salad Bar as their meeting-place was filled with all of the Aes Sedai membership who had decided to forsake Elaida and run off to Salad Bar. There were only two missing. One was Rosemary Sedai, who had raced off into the Blight to defect to the Dark One's service when she found out who the popular choice for the next Amyrlin Seat was. The other was Jaina Sedai, who had only joined the White Tower to hone her arts at showmanship. She and her Warder can now be seen in Cairhein giving magic shows at the local clubs, using the One Power to pull rabbits out of hats (or, more commonly, her swooping neckline) and demonstrating how free will does not exist thanks to the power of the Wheel of Time. But enough about that.

As with most Aes Sedai rituals, it involved more awkward and inexplicable nudity than a teenage farmer boy's daydreams about a young milk maiden. For years, Aes Sedai and scholars have plied the records of the White Tower, trying to understand why a ritual as straight forward as raising an Amyrline required…what it did. The Blue Ajah alone know the answer, but they prefer to use their Aes Sedai answers to placate curious researchers.

"There's a reason," they say when asked about it. What is the reason? "Oh? I have to go do stuff now. Bye."

Egwene felt hot in the face as she stood in front of the throne that all Amyrline's were to sit in. Since they did not have time to bring the real throne from the White Tower when they fled Elaida, the Salad Bar Aes Sedai made do with a beanbag chair. She was here, now came the hard part.

"Are only women present?" cried the MC of the ritual, a woman named Siuan, who was not too old and very pretty. She was the former Amyrline. "There must only be women present here, so we have to make sure." She unbuttoned her shift. "And by the way: silverpike." Siuan lowered her shift to her waist. Were this primetime TV, a black rectangle would appear at this moment. "I am a woman." All around, the same bizarre gesture was repeated, with a PHOOSH of fabric as the shift was lowered.

"I am a woman."

PHOOSH

"I am a woman."

PHOOSH

"I am a woman."

DUP DUP DUP, KURICK

Mat Cauthon had just unbuttoned his vest and pulled it aside, to reveal two pink balloons taped to his chesthair. As every female eye turned to regard him, Mat looked around the room, his eyes wide enough to engulf a small town. The whole membership, numbering over in the hundreds, with lowered shifts glared at him, and he was looking back. Even beneath his womanly wig and makeup, Egwene could see it was him.

POOF! Mat had just taken a picture with his camera.

"What?" Mat asked, his voice high and girlish. He was still trying the ruse.

"We know it's you, Cauthon," Egwene stammered. Mat took another picture.

"Fine, you caught me. But at least I'm honest, unlike the ninety-five peeping toms who're spying right now." At Mat's words, the sound of running could be heard outside. "And you should check the windows whenever you send a girl into that archway thing."

…

"Alright." The Forsaken were gathered outside the hallway where Egwene was being crowned. The target was in there with her. "Ok guys," began Lanfear, "these Aes Sedai have given us a lot of trouble in the past. Do we need to jump this guy right now or can we just bypass all these women?" The other Forsaken exchanged glances.

"Yeah, we can't," Demandred admitted. "If we don't drop them here, they'll hunt us." Lanfear cursed.

"Alright, here's what we'll do," Lanfear began, "I'll run in first and gather up people's attention, blast them down with the One Power. Mogidean can use her compelling shout, make them do what she says, so we don't have to fight them all at once. Then I'll need Rahvin to shout at them, to scare them, keep them scattered. We continue dropping them with our magic powers. I mean, we'll get in trouble if we don't take them down real quick. What do you think Aginor? Can you give me a brain-crunch real quick?" Aginor paused, calling on his scientific mind to do some calculating.

"I'm coming up with a thirty-two…point…something chance of survival. Repeating, of course," he said. Lanfear looked at him funny.

"Repeating?"

"Of us repeating. Of us being repeated in the next book, a 32 percent chance of that," he looked at her like it should have been obvious. Lanfear rolled her eyes.

"That's a lot better than we usually do with our minions." As it was, an assassin or army they sent at a servant of the Light, or at the Dragon Reborn and his friends, had a zero percent chance of survival and none of them were ever repeated in later books. Though somehow the same scene was repeated, just with different assassins.

"Alright!" Ishamael laughed, his eyes full of flame, "let's do this!" He kicked open the door. "WE'RE THE FOOOOOOORSAKEEEEEEN!" Lanfear gaped in disbelief at where Ishamael had been standing.

"Oh my god he just ran in."

…

"Ah!"

Aes Sedai shrieked as the Forsaken barged in. Women grasped at their shifts trying in vain to raise them in time. Others covered up. Some were knocked over by the terror of their kin. Of all the times the shadow chose to attack, why in the names of all the gods did it have to be now, when they were all half-naked? The Aes Sedai were too busy fumbling with their clothes and covering themselves to fight back against the attacking Forsaken.

"AH!" Ishamael cried out as he crashed into a potted plant on his way in. He tumbled to the ground as he hurled a bolt of balefire. The potted plant, incidentally a rose, bashed into Balthamel who was collapsed dead, his cloak pierced by thorns. Thorny vines reached out of his mask's eyeholes.

The balefire Ishamael threw hit Aginor and Belal by accident, demolishing both. This opened a temporal hole in the fabric of space and time. Lanfear paused to avoid crashing into it, but Rahvin charged into her from behind, knocking her through. Lanfear shrieked as she loosed a line of balefire by mistake, destroying Rahvin. The temporal hole closed. As Ishamael got up, Moghidean fell into him, knocking him over again. This time he fell on his own sword, killing himself.

Sammael tried to remedy the situation by opening a gate to Shadar Logoth and unleashing Mashadar on the Aes Sedai. But as Moghidean pulled back from Ishamael, she knocked him through his own portal and into Mashadar's maw. The portal closed. Moghidean's actions in turn distracted Messana as she launched her balefire missile. It plowed through Graendal and Semirhage before exploding against the wall, pushing the other Forsaken to the ground. Demandred fell on his own sword, killing himself. Moghidean broke her neck against the wall. Messana's skull split open on the ground. Only Asmodean stood back up.

"You?" he cried in disbelief to no one. "NO!" he keeled over and died.

"Sisters, the Forsaken are upon us. Fight for your lives and die with honour!" cried Nyaneve as she and the other Aes Sedai finished raising their shifts and jumped into attack formation, prepared to sell their lives. They got into ready stance and faced the entrance, where lay a pile of dead Forsaken and the smoking boots of those destroyed by balefire.

Crickets. Crickets. Crickets.

In the silence, someone coughed.

Crickets. Cricket. Crickets.

"Well," Mat beamed as he whipped out the dagger of Shadar Logoth and twirled it in his hands, "they're as stupid as hell…"

"At least I have a tank, BIYATCH!" cried a voice from outside.

The wall beside him crashed down as an M1A1 battle tank plowed through it. Its main cannon fired, blasting scores of Aes Sedai to bloody ruin. Its machine guns rattled, punching those women around Mat off their feet. Mounting the fierce metal beast's turret was a figure dressed in black, with a veil that covered their face and dark glasses over their eyes.

"Hahahah!" cackled the stranger, leaping off the tank's hull. Mat tried to defend himself, but the stranger bashed him over the head. He fell unconscious and was dragged away by the black-clad invader. "Goodbye losers!" the stranger hissed, getting back atop the tank with Mat and the dagger. "The power of Shadar Logoth is MINE!" The Aes Sedai fled in terror and the tank backed out of the hall.

"Well that's not fair!" Nyaneve cried in dismay as she pulled her braid. She had a habit of pulling on her braid when angry. "That person stole Mat? Now how are we going to box his ears for what he…what he…" She looked at Elayne, beside her, and handed her braid to her. Elayne pulled on it with all her might and Nyaneve continued talking. "He can't get away with that…ARGH…with that stunt. We've got to get him and punish him!" The thought of Mat getting away made her even angrier. She pushed her head forward with all her might, dragging even more pressure onto her braid. Several other women ran in to help Elayne pull Nyaneve's braid. They didn't even shake her balance. That made Nyaneve even angrier.

"But Mat was kidnapped. That's punishment enough," Egwene said.

"Not by us!" Nyaneve spat back, getting so angry her face turned red. "We need help from the Dragon Reborn. We've got to recover Mat so we can punish him properly." She shook her head. "Girls, get off my braid. Your pulling sucks! That makes me really angry!" Everyone let go of Nyaneve's braid and she walked into a corner, smoke billowing out of her ears.

"But how will we find that kidnapper?" asked Egwene.

"Easy you dirt-brained toad. The Wheel of Time will help us," growled a steaming Nyaneve as she tied her braid to something. "It does everything for us. We just have to start looking for him. We'll need Min too, to see Mat's future, which will give us clues as to where he is. And Aviendha, in case we have to fight the kidnapper."

The five-story rocket Nyaneve tied her braid to launched. Everyone plugged their ears as the rocket fuel ignited.

"That's better!" Nyaneve cursed as the rocket lifted up through the ceiling, tugging her braid. "And we need Rand and his powers to help us with Mat."

"What?" Egwene cried over the rocket's engines.

"I said get Rand!" Nyaneve shouted, straining against the rocket, putting as much pressure on her braid as she could.

"Hand? Who's hand?"

"I said we need Raaaaaaaaaaa…" Nyaneve's voice grew distant as the rocket shot up into the sky, taking her with it. The hall fell quiet as everyone bunched around the hole the rocket plowed in the ceiling and at the distant light that raced into the sky, a flailing Nyaneve hanging by her braid from its bottom. No one spoke until the light was gone, lost from sight on its course to outer space.

"She must have been really angry," Elayne said. "So, looks like she's gone forever."

Silence.

Then the hallway exploded into a chorus of cheering and jubilation. Women hugged, danced and cried in joy.

"Goodbye bossy ignoramus!"

"Goodbye little-miss ear-boxer!"

"Finally, I can get some respect around here."

People even danced over the bloodied bodies of the people killed by the tank. From that scene, the news spread that Nyaneve was gone. All across Salad Bar, the rumor was told.

Nyaneve tied her braid to a rocket and was launched into outer space after a kidnapper stole Mat, killed a bunch of Aes Sedai and rode away on a tank. No. Nyaneve was the kidnapper and took Mat into outer space with her. No. Nyaneve tied her braid to a kidnapper who launched Mat into outer space. No. A bunch of dead Aes Sedai rode in on a kidnapper who tied Mat to Nyaneve who was then fired from a tank into outer space. No. A braid from outer space rode in, stole a bunch of dead Aes Sedai and rode away on Mat after launching a kidnapper tied to a tank into Nyaneve. These rumors and more went from ear to ear throughout Salad Bar.


	3. Another chapter called CHOICES

"Ahem?" Egwene entered Rand Al'Thor's apartment. He'd come to Salad Bar a couple of days ago with his servants, the Asha'man to lend his support to the Aes Sedai. But he mostly came to pursue his own goals, whatever those were. Egwene had initially protested to him getting his own apartment in the Salad Bar residence, but now she didn't mind him. She was the Amyrlin Seat now and had the power to throw him out but the power he brought to the Aes Sedai was too important at a time like this.

"Knock next time," Rand remarked. Egwene's jaw dropped.

Rand sat on his throne. Fawning over him were Aviendha, Elayne and Min, all dressed in revealing outfits and crouching submissively, each trying to get as much of his attention as possible.

"What are you doing?" Egwene cried to the girls, "this is the Wheel of Time!" The three noticed her and were on their feet. Egwene blinked. They were now dressed in the clothes they usually wore. Elayne was in a scrumptious dress of hooker red, trimmed with gold lace. Aviendha wore a long skirt and a goofy veil. Min was dressed in a boy's work pants and a masculine tunic with a brown vest.

"Grrr…I'm a warrior of the spears!" Aviendha growled, flexing her arms.

"Hrrr…I'm the daughter-heir," Elayne growled in a hurry, looking regal.

"Rawrrr…Looks like your aura is…um…something," Min blurted in haste, planting her hands on her hips.

"That's better," said Egwene. "Now, Rand, Mat has been…"

"I already know," Rand said, munching on a chocolate bar and lifting the sports magazine he'd been reading back over his face. "I say forget it." Egwene's jaw fell open even more. "Forget it. If the Wheel of Time wills Mat's rescue, it will happen on its own." A paddleball ball on a string extended and retracted rhythmically from behind Rand's magazine. "Duh, I'm a tav'er…something. I shape the world with my very being. I don't have to do squat. Fate does everything for me. If an army of trollocs showed up outside Salad Bar right now, they'd all trip and fall and break their necks." Egwene found the concept amusing, but given what she'd already seen, she felt the sinking sensation that he was right. Mat once defied luck during his dice games and won tons of money to help him on his quest. Once, Rand was almost killed by a bowman, but saved by a flock of birds. What would happen if he did absolutely nothing? The Wheel of Time would have to do a lot of weaving then, but he'd get his way in the end.

"In any case, we need your help, for the sake of action. You can't be Dragon if you do nothing…"

Rand removed the magazine from his face. He put down his paddleball and popped a stick of gum into his mouth.

"Beg your pardon?" he asked.

"I said…!" Egwene's words were drowned out by the burst of a bubble of gum that Rand blew. "You wool-brained idiot!" Egwene stomped her foot. "Mat's your friend! We can't abandon him!" Rand shrugged.

"No sweat," he replied. "Girls? Go bring Mat in when he gets back to Salad Bar. And he will. His kidnapper will probably fall off his horse and die." He raised the magazine back over his face. Egwene frowned, then got an idea.

"Hey!" Rand shouted, reaching for his magazine, "that's mine!" Egwene held the magazine away from him, dodging his attempts to get it back.

"Help Mat or you never see this magazine again," she snapped. She pointed to her neckline, which was now significantly lower since her promotion. "And since I've got boobs, I win." It was a well-known law of physics that a man couldn't overcome a woman, ever.

"Fine," Rand huffed, "just give me a second to get ready." Egwene nodded and departed the chamber. In a flash, Elayne, Aviendha and Min were back in their skimpy outfits and fawning over Rand.

"What is it you creepy girls find so attractive about me anyway?" asked Rand.

…

"I really enjoy our adventures," Perrin said as the group rode away from Salad Bar, pursuing the tread marks left in the mud, looking over them with his yellow eyes. The weather for the past day had been perfect for preserving those treads. They moved through the countryside, now a great distance away from and far beneath Nyaneve's breasts.

Perrin was just one of the league of adventurers to be scooped up on this exploit. He joined Rand, Elayne, Min, Aviendha, Siuane and Lan, Nyaneve's warder husband. Lan never spoke much and always seemed to be cross with something. He had a backstory, but it was far too confusing and long and boring for Perrin to care about. In fact, he couldn't see why he should even bother learning it, given how little it changed what was going on.

"Dude," was all he said in his boring voice when he learned his beloved wife was launched into space. He seldom said much else.

"Well, I think these adventures suck," Min complained. "Ah, woolheads and fools, all of you." Aviendha just shrugged.

"It lets me dance with the spears a lot if I go on these fool errands," she replied. "It leads me up the long path to the winding road of death to further my picture." Rand rolled his eyes and dug his face back in to the book he was reading. His presence was benefit enough. He didn't actually have to do anything.

From the bushes, a man with a knife leapt at him. Said man impaled himself on Rand's spurs. Flanking the road, two teams of assassins leapt up and attacked Rand at once. Both missed and killed the other. Rand's friends panicked, but Rand didn't lift his eyes from the pages.

"Dude," said Lan, stepping over an assassin.

"This character really reminds me of you, Min," Rand said, of a character in the book before him. "She's a real streetwise hooligan. Practically stole your name too. Vin?" He turned the book over. "Who wrote this?"

"Would you put that thing down!" shouted Siuan. "Why are you reading it anyway?"

"I don't know," Rand put it away. "I just had this feeling to pick it up. I felt reading how it went might give us some clues as to what might happen…oh my god."

Perrin had dismounted and was sniffing the road with his nose: another doggish habit he had found a liking to after getting that odd disease that turned his eyes yellow. The doctors said he had a severe case of jaundice but Perrin insisted he was a wolf. Since then, he'd been shedding on the couch, licking crotches, sniffing butts, humping legs, pooping on the furniture, barking at strangers and slobbering all over everything. Rand turned up the volume on his music player every time Perrin began barking at nothing after hours.

"They've not left a scent trail," Elayne giggled, fingering her perfect red curls with a thin, pale finger. Like most females in this world, Elayne was a supermodel. She had a brother named Galad, who'd joined one of the many, many groups who'd been designated as "bad" by the script. Galad was only her half brother, but the target of a lot of naughty pre-teen fantasies, wherever he went. She also had a full brother named Gawyn, but no one really knew what his purpose was. Egwene had a crush on him, one that she thought was a secret. Elayne turned up the volume on her music player every time Egwene began talking in her sleep while having a dream about Gawyn.

"What?" Elayne asked.

"I asked you how you know there's no trail!" Perrin stammered. Elayne shook her head, clearing it. She'd gotten lost on a tangent and lost track of reality.

"It's been too long. Because it's a honking tank, we've got this nice path of treads to follow," pointed out Elayne, "we need no skill. Just use this clear-as-day trail." Rand agreed, nodding his head in time to dodge a shuriken that whizzed out of a tree. The ninja who threw it tried to drop down on him, but missed and landed on his head in the mud.

"We should prepare for an ambush," Aviendha added. "I ride ahead, make sure all is clear up ahead." Aviendha was the Aiel lady from the waste. She was just as attractive as all the idyllic women in the Wheel of Time. Like all women, she was strong of spirit, assertive and a violent misandrist. Rand was glad his days of girl-trouble were over, when he had to choose who he could love. Today, he could love whoever he wanted, and the people he wanted were the three girls right here. But back then, Aviendha had said nothing but "you belong to Elayne." He'd always crank the volume of his music player WAY up when she said that.

As they continued on, Salad Bar grew further away. They were going through a grand forest now, soon to reach the banks of the river Eldar. From there, they could take a number of ways. They could go to Illian or Andor, depending on where these tracks led. Rand just gave a frown and took his book back out. To his left, Perrin stopped to pee on a tree. To his right, Elayne indicated an inconsequential shrine by the side of the road.

"See that?" she asked, "that's the shrine built by Lord Harathanfaggher of House Doobala-Doobala in Andor. He was a powerful man who sought to earn favour with the pilgrim population, which would excel his standing…" Rand listened intently, assured this would be an important piece of fact that he might have to remember later. "…in the Game of Houses." No. It wasn't important.

"So he built this shrine with the help of his brother-in-law, who had connections to three of his rivals. So on the day of the shrine's construction…"

Rand turned the knob on his music player.

"YAYAYAYAYAY!" (Guitar solo) "WAAAAAARRRGH!" He could see Elayne's lips moving as she went on and on and on and on and on and on and on about the Game of Houses.

That night, they slept outside in sleeping bags. Rand was plagued by nightmares and he tossed and turned. In doing so, he dodged twenty-seven assassins, causing them to strike one another. Rand was awoken at first light by the feeling of Perrin's hot tongue lapping his face as he perched over Rand on all fours. The party feasted on dead assassin for breakfast before heading out.

"Dude," said Lan expressionlessly as they continued on.

…

"Please let me go," begged Mat to the black-clad stranger. He struggled against the ropes that bound him as he sat in the back of the M1A1, looking helplessly at his kidnapper.

"No," said the stranger from behind his or her mask for the fifth time. "I have plans for you my friend."

"Don't hurt my hat though. It's my iconic piece of gear. Someone who sees it lying on the road would know it's mine…"

"Quiet! We're coming up on a narrow bridge." They tensed as the tank rolled across the bridge. "No, the bridge is too weak. We should cross this other bridge…" From outside, a loud explosion and a chorus of screams reached them.

"What was that?" asked Mat in terror.

"A falling meteor. Just flattened the other, stronger bridge and killed a lot of people. Okay. We should ride through the shallows…"

Screams and rushing water sounded from outside.

"Alright…there was just a flash flood. Lots of people drowned. No sweat. We'll take the ferry…"

The sound of cracking wood and a sinking ship sounded.

"Okay. That just sank. Lots of people drowned. So I guess we'll have to go around this river, through that city on the riverside to the west." Mat saw the kidnapper walk over to the turret and stick their head out of the port. "And we could, if the city was not burning down."

"Hm, so maybe we should just take the risk and go across the bridge?" Mat suggested. "The plot is obviously taking some liberties to railroad us." The kidnapper nodded and climbed back into the driver's seat. With a groan, the tank rolled across the frail bridge. The reactions were like clockwork.

First, they hit a bump, which jostled Mat's hat off. The bump opened the top hatch, and Mat's hat floated up and out. A gust of wind caught the hat, bringing it down the path they had just crossed and settled it on the road right in front of the bridge. The hat remained still and was illuminated by a spotlight that some forgetful theatre worker had forgotten by the road. A passerby tried to pick it up, but was fried by lightning.

"Wow," Mat remarked as they crossed the bridge, which collapsed behind them. "They should call it the Sociopath of Time. Should we really be fighting the Dark One? I think this wheel thing is…" he was suddenly afraid. "What if the great hand in the sky decides to throw me out?"

"Relax," replied the kidnapper. "The people who died to get us to cross this bridge weren't essential to the plot." They rolled over the drowned corpse of an innocent child that drowned in the flash flood. "Imagine how pissed one of your friends would get if the Wheel of Time killed one of them?" Mat nodded, thinking back to all the dear friends he had lost during his war with the shadow.

First there was…

Um…

Hmmm…

Mat shrugged, recalling how many of his beloved Red Band had died, but cursing his inability to recall their names. There was that one time they came upon that slaughtered Tinker caravan with the words "tell the dragon" written upon a destroyed wagon. Tell the dragon what? He had searched the scene but couldn't find anything. So he ended up telling Rand that he found a cart with the words "tell the dragon" written on it.

"I just thank that I'm a tavern," Mat still couldn't pronounce the word. "So I just take whatever the wheel weaves for me." The ground grew bumpy. They were rolling over heaps of drowned innocents who had washed ashore, killed by the floods that forced them to cross the bridge. "Praise the Wheel of Time!"

"I guess it's the will of the Wheel that you be kidnapped," the stranger said to him.

"No, it blew off my hat, remember? But I know the wheel loves me. Back in Ebou Daur, when the Seanchan attacked, I had a freaking building fall on me and all it did was make it so I had to be wrapped up like a mummy for a bit, but I was fighting fit once I needed to be." The stranger nodded.

"I know," he or she said from behind that black mask.

"Who are you?" Mat asked. The stranger turned back to him and removed that black mask to show a familiar woman's face beneath it. It was…it was…

"Now you're mine, little fox," said Tylin.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Mat cried.

…

Their route of rescue took them past the Stone of Tear. It was from that fortress that a band of mercenaries stole Egwene and Elayne and imprisoned them in a shielded cell in the pits of the stone. Their date of execution was creeping closer. Only Perrin was smart enough to find a way into the Stone of Tear: the most guarded fortress in all of the lands of…the lands of… the lands of world. While the others waited outside the city, Perrin drove himself onward through trials of strength and wit to get to the cell.

He cleaved his way through the guards with his axe, chopped their heads, broke their shields, sniffed their butts, and tore them apart, as he pushed his way to the cell where the girls were cruelly locked. In his wake he left only corpses and the occasional peed-on fire hydrant.

With a roar, he broke down the cell door where Elayne and Egwene were being held. He looked in dismay at the pair of dirty girls as they crawled forth from their captivity, looks of hope written on their abused faces.

"Thank the light I have found you!" Perrin said. "Are you two hurt…?"

"WE HAD IT UNDER CONTROL!"

Egwene hit Perrin with a folding chair, knocking him down. Elayne slammed her elbow into Perrin's gut, then put him in a headlock and twisted his head until she heard a satisfying crunch. The two then began bashing him until he stopped moving. But as they beat him, the two began to slow down.

"It's just not the same without Mat," Egwene sighed sadly as she finally abated and helped Perrin up. "Or Nyaneve, but Mat's easier to boss around." Perrin spat out a mouthful of blood and fell over as soon as Egwene took her hands off him. Elayne ignored him.

"We have to find him before its too late. The Dark One must also sense his kidnapping. He must be mobilizing his darkfriends right away." Perrin crawled to his feet. "Now, we need to get out of here. If only we had Nyaneve…"

The resulting explosion destroyed all of the Stone of Tear. Perrin, Elayne and Egwene looked around them. Though they were on the bottom floor, by the will of the Wheel of Time, the falling Stone of Tear had collapsed in such a way that they were all standing on islands of clear space, surrounded by rubble. Nearby, the crashed ruin of the rocket Nyaneve had sent herself into space with lay aflame. Nyaneve herself was walking up from it, uninjured, offended by how the crash had ruffled her skirt.

"Let's go," Nyaneve shouted, "we have to return to the rescue effort. We're falling behind."

"How do you know what's been going on?" asked Perrin. Nyaneve looked startled.

"Why, I've been following along."

"I know, but how do you understand this hugely dense, complex plot? Cause I certainly don't."

…

Nyaneve sat in the camp, looking through the darkness at the campfire. Everyone was asleep in their sleeping bags, except for her. She was contemplating Perrin's words about how cruel she, Elayne and Egwene had been to Mat when he saved them from the Stone of Tear. As she watched the others sleeping, she was reminded of a time in Tel'aran'rhiod…

"_Ha!" Nyaneve said to herself, creeping away from the forsaken as they dismissed their committee meeting. "I spied on the five of you without getting caught." She crept through the fabrics of the dreamworld to return to safety, when suddenly she was hit by a wave of power. But by what power? The forsaken were out of sight! _

_By the power of Tel'aran'rhiod, or more likely an author's filthy imagination, her clothes poofed away while she was hoisted into the air until her body was stretched into a floating ring, with her face pointing outward. She gasped as Moghidean leapt into view._

"_Hah!" she taunted, "now you look like a piece of Graedal's chair." Nyaneve raised an eyebrow._

"_Huh?" she asked._

"_I have made you into an imitation of one of the many replicas of naked people that make up the stone on Graedal's chair. Now, I can make you betray your friend. BETRAY ELAYNE AND GIVE HER TO ME."_

"_Why?" Nyaneve asked. _

"_Why betray Elayne?"_

"_No! Why the elaborate Graedal's chair nonsense. I've put up with enough awkward and inexplicable nudity since joining the Aes Sedai but I can't quite puzzle out your reasoning here. Why not just freeze my joints? It would be easier. Now you just come off as some kind of messed up…man." Moghidean looked offended. _

"_I…I'm not a man. Or a perv. I'm just trying to make you do my bidding." Moghidean looked ashamed. "Fine, we'll try this again." Nyaneve's clothes reappeared and she stood straight, but her joints frozen. She was helpless before Moghidean, who disappeared and reappeared._

"_Hah! I have you! Now," Moghidean cackled, "BETRAY ELAYNE!" _

_For a moment, Nyaneve was terrified. They had danced away from all of Moghidean's plans before, but now she was in a real pickle here. Now they were in trouble. Now the bad guys might score a victory._

"_Oh no, please no!" begged Nyaneve in terror. "I don't want to betray my friend!" _

"_But you have no choice, for you are compelled to obey me," Moghidean laughed. _

"_NO!" How could they recover from this? How could their friendship survive? After hundreds of blank pages, now Nyaneve and her friends were in some danger that they couldn't wiggle out of. Now, they were going to have to make sacrifices._

_Or not._

"_RAAAAA!" Ms. Silverbow jumped out of a cloud of smoke and fired an arrow into Moghidean, who disappeared. Nyaneve escaped unharmed._

"_Noooo!" Nyaneve had cried to Silverbow when she woke up to find her in the same camp. She kicked her over and over. "I had it under control! I had it under control! You ruined it!" Instead of a testing trial between her and Elayne, now she would get off scot-free from her trouble with Moghidean. Now she had the daunting task of living through the next few chapters without any real dangers to fight._

That was what they had actually meant when Mat had saved her, Elayne and Egwene from the Stone of Tear. They had everything under control, meaning, they were in danger and would have to suffer a true trial of courage and sacrifice. One of them might have died.

Instead, Mat dues ex machinaed them to safety, giving them a boring solution to a terrible problem, just like Silverbow had done with Moghidean's hold on Nyaneve. So they beat up on Mat. Nyaneve was looking forward to facing real danger and suffering under the fist of the garrison, danger that might make or break her. Instead she was spirited out and allowed to continue her danger-free quest under the watchful eye of the Wheel of Time.

"That's it!" Nyaneve shouted to no one. "I'm tired of this fate nonsense weaving reality into position against our will. I, Nyaneve, am going to destroy the Wheel of Time!"

Right then, the wind blew too hard and a collapsing tree fell towards her, its cumbersome trunk somehow missing everyone else but her. Nyaneve raised her shield and turned the tree to ash just as it landed on her head. She shook herself clean and checked her cleavage for injury.

"Ha!" she laughed at the sky, "missed!"

An anvil fell on her head.


	4. Throwing the Wheel under the shadow

Mat shivered against the cold and crossed his legs awkwardly as he sat on the stool in the middle of Tylin's tower's flat roof, located in the wilderness of a land he did not recognize. His body was open to the sky. Tylin sat beside him, setting down the last of Mat's clothes, which she had just finished cutting up with the Shadar Logoth dagger.

"So why are you doing this?" Mat asked. "There's nothing out here."

"Ebou Daur got Seanchaned," replied Tylin, "this is my home away from home."

"Why am I naked?"

"Because of this universe!" Tylin raised her fists at the sky. "I am tired of all the unneeded, unexplained female nudity in this universe. Gonna sit in the sweat tent? Better be as nude as a baby. Gonna go into Rhuidean? Not while wearing clothes, you aren't. See that archway that all must pass through before being accepted into the White Tower? It's magic powers kill anyone who's wearing clothes who try to go into it. The Aiel want to bond two girls as first-sisters. But they have to do it in the creepiest way imaginable. Min has a vision of Siuan's fall from the Amyrlin Seat? Well, she sees a vision of her naked and hogtied. Why? I dunno! It never comes true! Cleavage gets lots of attention, much more attention than faces or voices. And its almost always women. Well, if there's going to be nakedness for stupid reasons, then there's got to be enough guys there to balance it out." She stomped her foot. "See this tower? It's owner, that would be me, kills any man who sits atop it on a stool without going naked first."

"Hey, Rand and I have been exposed whenever we got dressed…" Mat began.

"For practical, understandable, explicable reasons. You're here for no reason at all." Tylin huffed as she went down a trapdoor to the tower's lower levels and slammed the door shut.

"Great," groaned Mat. He looked down the tower and knew the fall would be fatal. He tried the trapdoor, but it was locked. When a train of Tinkers rolled by, he tried calling to them for help.

"Way of the Leaf!" they shouted back at him. Angry, Mat threw a long ladder at them in rage. The ladder splintered on the ground and the Tinkers left, cackling.

"Great," he groaned again and began to whistle "Dance With Jacko-the-Shadows" to pass the time.

Or was it Jacko-the-Wisps? He was sure the song had at least two names.

"Hey there," sneered a mocking voice from behind him. Mat looked in time to spot Padan Fain, crawling up the wall with his bare hands. He was like a spider.

"Get help, hurry," Mat begged. Padan Fain gave him the finger and took the Shadar Logoth dagger. Mat backed away, but Padan wasn't interested in him at all.

"Now it is mine!" he cackled, "my precious." Mat backed away, but Padan was uninterested in killing him. Padan clambered back down the wall.

Now the shadow had the dagger.

…

In the Pit of Doom, Shai'tan was bubbling with excitement. He looked once more over his list and considered how he would get them.

"WITH THESE NEW FORSAKEN, THERE IS NO WAY THE DRAGON WILL DEFEAT ME," he said to himself as he read his list once more. Underneath the written heading "New Forsaken" was listed thirteen names.

Megatron. 2. Darth Vader. 3. Frankenstein. 4. King Kong. 5. Elmer Fudd. 6. Black Lagoon Creature. 7. The Blob. 8. The Joker. 9. Godzilla. 10. Jaws 11. Freddy Kruger 12. Jack the Ripper 13. Dracula

"Um, your vileness?" asked Padan Fain as he stumbled into the Pit of Doom, "I have your dagger."

"WHAT?" Shai'tan rolled up his list and leaned forward, squinting at the tiny man on the ledge below him. Padan waved up and pointed triumphantly at the dagger of Shadar Logoth.

"I've totally got it sir," Padan said. Shai'tan looked disappointed. They say the worst feeling in the world was fulfillment. Now what did Shai'tan have left to do?

"WELL, NOW I CAN GET TO SACKING THE LAND, I GUESS," Shai'tan said. "I…JUST…HANG ON." He leaned down and picked the dagger from Padan's hands, squishing the man himself between his huge fingers by mistake. He could feel the power of the dagger's evil course through him. HAHAHA! It felt great. Now, he could conquer the sunlit lands of…whatever this planet was called.

"HONEY!" Shai'tan shouted into the other room. "WHERE IS MY TROLLOC HORDE!"

"YOU COME FOR DINNER RIGHT NOW!" shouted Ladi'tan in her shrill, agitated housewife voice. "I AIN'T CARE IF YOU WANNA GO AN MAKE A FUSS ON THE MORTALS. WE'VE GOTTA EAT!"

"BUT I NEED MY TROLLOC…"

"WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE MAN I MARRIED? WHAT HAPPENED TO US JUST SITTING DOWN AND EATING AS A FAMILY? HM?" Shai'tan rolled his burning eyes as Baby'tan and Girl'tan, his two kids, pulled him towards the other room, pleading with him not to fight with their mommy again.

"JUST GIMME A QUICK BIT…" Shai'tan began, while Baby'tan crawled up his leg to his shoulders and pulled on his hair.

"YOU SAY THAT ALL THE TIME, THEN I FIND YOU DRUNK!" screamed Ladi'tan. "I FIND YOU PASSED OUT IN ONE MORE TAVERN AND IT'S THE DOOR WITH THE KIDS AND I!"

"AW SHUT UP WOMAN!"

"WHAT IF I KNOCK YOUR LIGHTS OUT?"

Shai'tan knew there was no point to continue arguing. He'd just have to invade the world and purge it of light and remake it in his own terrible image.

Right after dinner.

"URGH," groaned Shai'tan as he walked into the Kitchen of Doom and dodged a skillet swung by his angry wife. He laid Baby'tan onto the ground and walked to the Washroom of Doom. Shai'tan had to take a dump.

"HANG ON, I GOTTA GO THROW THE GREAT WHEEL UNDER THE SHADOW," Shai'tan said, pointing to the toilet seat. He closed the door and sat down. A great darkness fell over the wheel.

…

Nyaneve's misadventure with the anvil had been cured during the previous day by Rand's use of Saidin. She was now about half her original height, having been compressed by the anvil's weight. She looked bizarre, even to Rand, who had seen some weird stuff. She looked like a figure of soft clay that had been compressed. It was hard not to laugh, but each laugh was answered with a kick to the groin. Her mistreatment by the hands of fate made her angry, and she had Lan pull on her braid for her, tugging it upwards.

"We'll kill two men with one stone," she said as Lan pulled her hair up harder. "This will help my anger and uncompress my spine."

"Dude," Lan replied. "Dude."

"Good point," Nyaneve replied, her squished face managing to speak despite her flattened skull. "I'll get Perrin, tomorrow."

…

It was nighttime now and Elayne was the only person awake. She stared wide-eyed at the starry sky, contemplating the future. Her kingdom of Andor needed her. She had to get back to claim her throne from her dead mother.

"Yes," Egwene's voice gasped in the darkness. She was talking in her sleep again. "Give it to me Gawyn, give it to me! Yes!" Elayne fumbled around in the dark for her music player. Unable to find it, she stood up and took a walk, leaving the camp far behind. Thus, the Wheel of Time set its plans in motion.

Elayne walked around the night-blackened forest they were traveling through that suddenly thrust itself out onto an open plain that overlooked a valley. Below her, marching through the valley, were the Bad Guys.

Shadowspawn, so they were called. A mighty rogues gallery of nasties created by the dark powers. Columns of trollocs formed the bulk of the force. They were too-human beasts on two legs. Artists still debate whether they were total animal people or just men with beastly features.

Some were wolf-headed, some had elephant trunks, some were horned, goat-faced, and some were covered in beastly hair. A number sported the heads and beaks of crows. A few bore bold red rooster waddles or rabbit ears. They marched on cloven hoofs, delicate chicken legs, crab legs or talons. There were pigeon people with swords and shields, beaver-toothed men armed with a woodcutter's chainsaw and wrinkled warriors with turtle shells to carry the army's white flags. Elayne saw carp-like trollocs flopping across the ground on scaly bellies armed with harpoons, caterpillar trollocs to creep out the squeamish and deer-headed trollocs hefting shotguns and wearing hillbilly overalls.

Behind them marched a retinue of workers, clearing up the shed fur, poops, feathers and other nonsense that the untamed trollocs left in their wake. It sounded like a barnyard, even from up here.

Overseeing them were the pale Fades, armed with ferocious seeing-eye hellhounds to lead their blind masters. They had to wear hooded robes (to protect their sensitive skin from the sunlight) and a few walked with canes, because their nimble bodies were too weak to carry them.

The grey men stood with their fellow shadowspawn. They had grey, hairless skin with small bodies and big heads that had large, black almond-shaped eyes and no mouths. The grey men got around in flying saucers that fired death rays at those who displeased Shai'tan.

To disorient the reader even more, there were yet more types of shadowspawn.

There was the Draghkar, the great bats who attacked by getting caught in one's hair. There were the darkhounds, the unnatural dogs. They left pawprints in stone, could see in the dark and peed all over gravestones instead of trees. There were also the Gholam, who, when not in the service of the Shadow, were acrobats at the local circus. Standing over them were the dreadlords! They looked like great pale men with demonic wings, horns, claws and turned into bats when they died. They could cast Sleep, Inferno, Carrion Swarm and had a Vampiric Aura.

"Well this sucks," Elayne remarked in dismay. They were dangerously close to Andor. They had bigger problems now than Mat. "I've got to warn the others."


	5. A Sexy Fight Scene

"I'm invincible," Rand murmured for the fifth time as he bent down to inspect the pimp hat they had just found. There was no question about it: it was Mat's. It lay beneath the warm glow of a spotlight and was ringed by the charred bodies of those innocent fools who'd tried to pick it up. Rand scooped up the hat and nodded. "You see? We're on the kidnapper's trail. They obviously crossed that bridge." Rand pointed to a weakened bridge that crossed the river before them.

"Yes, I know," Elayne replied. "But there's a huge army coming our way!" Why did she even bother.

"Relax," Rand replied as he waved his hands around an invisible bubble around himself. "The Wheel of Time. Now, let's get going." Behind him, Nyaneve stomped her foot in irritation, not just at Rand's laziness but at the mounting evidence that Rand was right about the Wheel of Time.

Soon, very soon, just as soon as she knew how the task could be done…

Rand sat back on his horse as he led the team across the bridge. As they crossed, Rand flopped the hat onto his head and smirked. Sitting between Elayne, Min and Aviendha, he extended his arms to embrace them all.

"So, how do you like my new pimp-hat?" asked Rand. The horses all stopped. "Now I know why Mat never took it off." Perrin snorted.

"It's to keep the sun out…" he began.

"No, it's a pimp-hat," Rand replied. "Wear it when I deal with my ladies," he winked at his three girlfriends, who tried to answer his advances with womanly dignity.

"Aw well, men are fools and women are so much stronger," Elayne said with a blush. She still didn't want to admit that she had squealed in girlish delight when Egwene first called Rand "mr. Warder."

"Aw, cut that out or I'll stick you with my spear, weak man," Aviendha spat, while trying not to look at Rand's crotch.

"I see your aura and…stuff," Min was too blunt to say anything smart. Nyaneve grumbled, knowing too well that, beneath all that Amizonian feminism, her three younger friends were just boy-chasing fangirls. She'd heard their late-night discussions about their fantasy to bond Rand as their warder. Could they please get moving?

"Hey, if you three all think I'm such an empty-head, then why go out with me?" Rand winked and gave his hat a twirl. "Come on girls, I mean, most guys would kill to have a harem of three babes. You gave yourselves to me."

"I am totally uninterested in men. I just want to dance with spears," Aviendha said, still averting her eyes from Rand's saddle. "Besides, men are such bad fighters."

"Hey," Perrin snapped, "I hew trollocs all the time."

"Yeah, mindless enemy-killing. Men are so simple, like that."

Nyaneve's eyes widened as the first rank of trollocs came into sight on the far-side of the river.

"Women are strange."

"Men think with the hair on their chests."

"Um, guys?" Nyaneve called in alarm. Egwene was involved now, hands on her hips and frowning like a housewife who caught a naughty boy with his hand in the honey jar (or some other charming, village-life related simile).

"Men need to be spanked," said Egwene, causing the air to constrict around Perrin, holding him still. Perrin began to howl as gusts of solid air lashed painfully against his backside.

"Guys? The trollocs?" Nyaneve called while Fades and Gray Men came into sight.

"Dude! Dude!" Lan was stammering, tugging Rand's sleeve and pointing at the incoming legions.

"Not now Lan. Women, why, all they do is complain and blame men," Rand snapped. "Women are strange. Women are strange."

"We can do this quest-thing alone, without you fool-men!" Egwene snapped.

"Ever wonder why all Aes Sedai are women? Because women are better," added Min.

"Women are still strange," Perrin replied.

"Guys! Please! The enemy is coming! Can't you see them?" Nyaneve and Lan were panicking. The first wave of trollocs were marching across the bridge.

"You know what?" Aviendha asked, "I think I'll kill you two for being useless men."

"Oh, whatever. Men are stronger in arm," Rand said.

"No they're not. Not in brain either. That's why the weaker sex is men," Aviendha answered.

It was hopeless. The trollocs were seconds away. Nyaneve and Lan could see the hunger and dark malice in their eyes. Their weapons were so close, Nyaneve could imagine their sharpness. She shuddered at those salmon-men, those bear-people, those monstrous guinea pig-warriors.

"Seriously guys, knock it off and help Lan and I," Nyaneve sobbed. It didn't help. They still argued. There was only one more thing to do to get their attention.

"Black people are all a bunch of thieves!" Nyaneve called out at the top of her lungs.

…

"Uh…what?" the Creator sorted through the script, but couldn't find any racism amongst the boundless sexism. How then had Nyaneve said that? The Creator looked at the Wheel of Time with worry. So Nyaneve was getting power over it.

…

Even the trollocs were taken aback by her abrupt racism. Rand, his three girlfriends and Perrin all shut up and gazed in disgust at Nyaneve. "Good," Nyaneve said, "now that I have your attention; SHADOWSPAWN!"

"Hm? Oh!" Rand drew his heron-marked sword. "The Dark One sends his legions!" He dismounted and charged. "And chop up Nyaneve for saying such a hateful, irresponsible thing when you're done."

"Huh?" Nyaneve asked, "I said that to get your attention."

"Kill the Shadowspawn, then kill intolerant Nyaneve!" Aviendha whooped, charging in after Rand, waving a spear.

"Stop the Shadowspawn and Nyaneve!" Perrin cried, rushing with his axe.

"Dude?" Lan shrugged.

"Looks like I'll have to go off on my own then," Nyaneve sighed to Lan, "I was hoping we wouldn't have to break the story up." Ignorant Rand! Ignorant Aviendha! Ignorant everybody! But then what did she expect, when she went out adventuring with a bunch of young 20-year olds?

…

There was no way in the world so few could hold out against so many. But Rand was the Dragon, so fate watched his back.

Rand fought with a heron-marked blade. The heron characterized Rand very well. It had a long nose, stubby legs and flapped its arms around crazily but to no effect whenever it didn't get its way. First, Rand entered the void, which engulfed his world. He did a cartwheel, evading the death-ray fired from one of the Grey Men's spaceships and clove into a knot of Trollocs.

His swordsmanship skills were impressive and all learned by reading _Swordfighting for Ye Olde Fooles™ _which was the same book that Eragon had learned his spectacular sword-fighting from in such a short time. Eragon swung his…Rand swung his sword and knocked a head off a trolloc in a spray of turkey feathers. It was amazing to think that he was herding goats less than three years ago and was now a sword-master. His different forms had different names (he never used the same form twice in one battle)

Tiger lurking through the trees became cobra strikes its prey. Three trollocs went down. Rand spun up and attacked a wall of trollocs. Camel spits became crab falls off a rock and lands on its back. Mouse scampers through the reeds became fat man takes a noisy crap. All around him, the trollocs were no match for his poetic-sounding forms. Rand finished off the fade he was fighting with a flawless demonstration of anime fan glomps voice actor.

"Damn, I'm good," Rand said as the sunlight waved through his rich, red hair that hung out from beneath his pimp hat. His smoothly-shaven face was adorably manly with his prominent cheekbones and pointed chin that was boyishly smooth. His piercing eyes were lovely and enchanting all at once. By rights, he should have been overcome, but fate kept him on his feet. He killed with every poetic motion, showing no mercy but great beauty.

…

Aviendha threw her spear like a javelin and knocked a Gray Man off his flying saucer. She collected a fallen sword and clove her way through the melee to reach her spear. She collected it and dealt a flying kick to a fade, which knocked him off the bridge and into the water. Her perfect, strong leg bent back and her foot struck another fade, sending it too into the water. Her face was beautiful, even under the shou'fa(?) rag-thing that every Aiel had to wear in battle…sorry, **when dancing with the spears**. Aviendha was just so pretty when she danced from shadowspawn to shadowspawn, leaving corpses in her wake. No blades could mar her beautiful form.

…

Elayne threw energy from her fingers, shooting down another flying saucer. She saw a wave of trollocs rush her and threw fire at them. The trollocs burned, and in the fire they created, Elayne was perfect and splendid. Her low-cut dress showed her round cleavage and her perfect form moved perfectly with the flow of the battle. She sighed and blew up a fade, spraying bits of the unlucky monster in all directions. A touch of gore got onto Elayne's soft bosom. She wiped it away very delicately.

…

Rough and hairy, gushing masculinity from his ears, Perrin chopped through wave upon wave of trolloc warrior. His sculpted arms were so boulder-strong and so perfect, not even a sculptor could add to their perfection if he was made of stone. His manly arms strangled life from trollocs, his big, strong axe cut shadowspawn in two, his tough-guy face sniffed butts left and right. His sweaty chest heaving, he threw two trollocs into the river, before drawing his axe from a dead dreadlord and cutting down another victim, who fell dead at his feet, as if to worship his manly, handsomeness.

…

"I can see your aura," Min said in a small voice before a trolloc hewed her head off.

…

"I must hunt soon," whispered Dark-scary, the dreadlord while he surveyed the fight. He longed to kill those pesky kids, but knew they were too strong for him and his shadowspawn. He would have to get help from the Blight.

"We must withdraw," moaned a wounded trolloc, stumbling back from the bridge. "They're too sexy."

"You thought of that?" asked Dark-scary. "I hunger!" Dark-scary cast Carrion Swarm on the group of young fighters. It didn't do as much damage as he'd hoped.

"I don't care if you hunger! We cannot stop them!" moaned the trolloc. Avienda's spear slung across the air and nailed the trolloc in the throat, killing him.

"Very well, agreed" said Dark-scary. They'd have to come back later. "Death rages," he cursed before ordering the retreat. Horns sounded and the shadowspawn fled. Dark-scary peeked at his bat-wings. 'If I have wings, why am I always walking?' he thought in dismay as he turned to run from the bridge and its too-sexy defenders with his broken troops.

Rand hurled balefire at him. Dark-scary screamed as he was destroyed; exploding into a flock of bats.

…

"That's the last of them," Rand said, finishing off the last living trolloc and letting the last ranks of the enemy disappear into the distance. Nearby, Min's headless body was fumbling through the corpses of the battle, looking for her head. "Now, let's go get Mat." Nyaneve and her racism had fled during the fighting, taking Lan with her.

"It's prejudice against races," said Min as she put her head back on. The wound disappeared and Min was no longer decapitated. She coughed and thanked the plot that she was too important to die.

"Right," replied Perrin, "like when I say women are strange."

"No, that's sexism. Racism is something else."

"Like when you say men think with the hair on their chests?"

"Still sexism. Racism is the kind of prejudice that isn't cool or funny." Min tried to think of an example of racism from the Wheel of Time. "For instance, remember when we called the Tinkers a bunch of weaklings…only that they are, bad example." Hm, sexism but no racism? It seemed that way. Odd.

…

Lan and Nyaneve rode pell-mell across the land atop gracefully galloping horses.

"Dude," Lan said.

"Really?" Nyaneve asked. "How do you know?"

"Dude."

"The face of the creator?" Nyaneve couldn't believe her husband had seen such a thing. But something powerful indeed had to have enchanted Min to let her put her head back on after having it knocked off. "Where did it go to?"

"Dude," Lan replied grimly, eyes full of hardness. Nyaneve's face darkened. She swore she wouldn't return there except to do justice to Elaida. Now it seems fate was compelling her to go. Or, perhaps, fate was finally being defied.

…

The Creator had to save Min. Her head fell off and she was still needed in the script, so she was shamefully dues-ex-machinaed back to life. But now the Creator had another issue to deal with. Nyaneve was riding up towards the White Tower (98 miles north of and a little bit above Nyaneve's breasts) in defiance of her fate. The Creator knew if Nyaneve exposed the Wheel of Time's big secret, all was lost. Fate would shoehorn Nyaneve back into her predetermined place or she would die.

…


	6. Rand reveals his true purpose

The Creator had to take some liberties with the universe to keep fate on track. So far, he had to rebuild a bridge, resurrect a headless woman, help Rand destroy an army of shadowspawn with his good looks and knocked off a half dozen places so Tylin's tank. As the Creator looked down on Nyaneve closing in on the White Tower, he prepared to dues-ex-get-the-hell-out Nyaneve.

"This plotline is not acceptable," the Creator looked down at his writing pad where he listed the names of all the people involved in the grand scheme. Fate was keeping them all on line, but Nyaneve's name was highlighted in red. She was getting closer to destroying the Wheel with every step. The Creator prayed Nyaneve never learned the Wheel's deep, dark secret.

"If her plotline ruins things, I might have to take some extra liberties to ensure the Final Battle does happen," the Creator said aloud. "There will be a Final Battle, even if I have to tear the world down to cause it!"

…

"I will destroy the Wheel of Time!" Nyaneve swore as she came into view of Tar Valon. "Even if I have to tear the world down to wreck it."

…

"I will find Mat," Egwene said as they crossed a sign that read: Far Madding. In the distance, there was a tower. "Even if I have to tear the world down to find him."

…

"YOU WILL FLUSH," Shai'tan snarled to the Toilet of Doom, pressing the flush lever over and over to no avail. "EVEN IF I HAVE TO DISMANTLE YOU TO MAKE YOU."

"WHERE ARE YOU? WE'RE SITTING DOWN TO EAT YOU BUM!" yelled Ladi'tan from the kitchen.

"SHUT UP! THE TOILET'S CLOGGED!" Shai'tan yelled back.

…

A shadowy figure dressed in a hooded robe passed through the gates that surrounded Tylin's tower. The figure regarded the Seanchan banners that flew from it. Whether the man's face carried hate or fear was for him to know, for no one could see past his hood.

"Stop," said the two Seanchan sentries who stood by the door to the tower. "You cannot pass." The man approached none-the-less. When the Seanchan struck at him with their spears, they both fell dead without explanation. The man walked by, closing the doors behind him.

Deep inside the tower, the idiot box, or _te'le'vision _in the old language, sat against the far corner of Tylin's main chamber. Within the roomy stone room sat Tylin, her court advisors and her son Beslan stood beside the sofa she lay upon. Numerous Seanchan attended her side, having been sent to help implement Seanchan law in Tylin's court now that she was a vassal of the Empress.

"_Today on Olver, we meet a couple who say they have literally nothing in common,_" said the host of the dating show they were watching. Mat had once known the host. Olver. He was gone now, forever sundered from his life. What a fool he had been to so underestimate his commercial potential.

The room laughed as the story of the bickering couple unfolded. They sat before the host, trash-talking one another.

"I swear, I have my knife and I'm just about to do it," said the wife, flicking the knife around her neck. Tylin grinned, fingering her own.

"Daga booga," Tylin said, tugging Mat's leash. Mat fell back against the rolls of Tylin's fat and shuddered.

Ever since discovering the _te'le'vision, _Tylin had put on some serious weight. She was now more a giant blob of fat than a living person. She took up the whole couch, and then some. When last measured, she weighed a whole ton.

That only slightly increased Mat's creepy relationship with Beslan. Mat used to hang out with him, back in Ebou Daur. When Tylin grew fond of Mat, the relationship got more awkward than mistaking someone's girlfriend for their mother. Normally, friends wouldn't go near one another's sisters. What then could Mat do when Tylin took a fancy to raping him? Needless to say, "that's what she said" jokes immediately ended.

"Hey, pass the cheesies," Mat said to Beslan. Beslan turned away from him and left a Seanchan guard to pass the bowl of snacks down the line of people that waited around the very overweight Tylin. Mat took the bowl just as the whole room burst out laughing at the _te'le'vision. _Mat was startled and the bowl spilt.

"_Kill him!" the room was chanting as the woman drew her marriage-knife and went after her unfaithful husband while security restrained them. _

Olver. Of all people, he was the one to start out his own show, while Mat was making $0 as an adventurer.

"Yeah," said Olver, the boy barely able to see over the table he sat at. "We'll be right back…"

The _te'le'vision _winked out, throwing the room into near darkness.

"WAGA DOOGA!" roared Tylin, who was unable to speak since fat clogged her windpipe. She gave Mat's chain a painful tug.

"Where's the circuit breaker?" asked Beslan.

"About three meters below, sixty-three degrees and ninety miles and five inches south of Nyaneve's breasts," replied one of the Seanchan: an unscrupulous woman named Tuon. She was, frankly, the ugliest bitch Mat had ever laid eyes upon. With a face like a rat, hands like a monkey and a tail like an iguana. Yes. She actually had a tail. Not a light, fluffy, furry-feitsh-kitty tail, but an ugly rope of knotted flesh. She was that ugly. Mat fancied her name an imitation of the sound somebody made when he stabbed them with his stave.

"TUGH-AGHN!"

Beslan left the room, following those instructions. Moments later, his voice called up from the basement, reporting that the circuit breakers were not responsible. But no reply came, for at that moment, the robed man stepped in. He took a moment to wretch at the sight of Tuon before stepping into the center of the chamber.

"Ho ho ho ho," Tylin laughed, "Gnamge wanga!" Mat crossed his legs when he noticed the robed man glance at him. Mat remembered that he was naked but for a speedo made of solid gold and lying against the fattest woman on earth. (But not the ugliest, that title belonged to Tuon). Tylin shook the leash she had Mat in, rustling the metal chains. "Daga dooga!"

"Tylin, who has grown to the size of a small hut, bids you welcome," said Tuon. "But she says that you are blocking her view of _The_ _Olver Show_."

"The _te'le'vision_ is not on," said the figure darkly. "I made it so with Saidin. So you could have my undivided attention." A hand reached out to point to Mat. "You will deliver him to me." The room laughed at the absurdity. Mat laughed with them, then stopped himself, confused as to why he started in the first place.

"Waga wonga da ogglie-boogie!" Tylin roared, shaking a meaty fist.

"No, I don't. And I wouldn't watch _The_ _Olver Show_ even if I had a _te'le'vision_. The Jain Farstrider cartoons are the best thing on the _te'le'vision_," replied the hooded man. "But we are getting off…" the room was laughing at him. Even Mat was laughing, and this time he knew why.

"Nerd!" Tuon laughed.

"Blood and ashes," the man huffed.

"Blood and bloody ashes, you dinosaur! No one said 'blood and ashes' anymore!" Tuon cackled as she lost control of her laughing. The air that escaped Tuon's laughing lungs washed over two nearby court attendants and made them more ugly.

"Look!" the man stomped, "we're getting off topic. Give me Mat." The laughing slowly died away.

"Wanga dingle-shpingle?" boomed Tylin.

"Tylin asks how you could take him? After all, you've just proven yourself to be a loser," Tuon replied. The man shook his head.

"You underestimate my power." He raised his hood slightly.

"Rand!" Mat cried in shock.

POOF! Rand took a picture of Mat in his cute speedo. Mat shrugged. He'd done the same to all those women back there, he supposed he deserved it.

"Rand!" Tylin boomed. "Hickery-dickery-dock!"

"Tylin says she knows all about your power, that you are the dragon reborn and she says her Seanchan troops can still beat you," Tuon said. Rand shook his head, grinning out from beneath his hood.

"You are the one who will be beat," Rand said, "for you mistake the power I am referring to. I have ascended, but not to the role of mystical chosen one…"

He tore off his robe.

Tylin's eyes widened in terror. The crows that nested in Tuon's eyebrows rolled over and died. Children began to cry and flowers withered. The sun hid its face and it began to rain.

…

The Creator looked up from his desk.

"What was that?" he asked the emptiness around him.

…

Rand tossed aside his robe, standing tall before the recoiling crowd.

"Hey!" Mat shouted, "that's mine!"

"I am a PIMP!" Rand announced gripping the edges of Mat's broad-rimmed hat, now upon his head. He twirled his heron-marked cane with his tiger skin gloves and ran his palms across his chest, which wore a light purple suit, trimmed with fur. "With this hat, I have finally gained my powers as pimp." Behind him, Egwene, Elayne and Min filed into the room.

"Light above," Elayne cursed as she looked at Tuon, "that woman is ugly."

Rand put his arms around the three of them and scowled at Tylin. "Give me Mat or face the consequences."

"Doodle-all-the-day!" roared Tylin to her terror-struck guards. The Seanchan soldiers rushed Rand and drew their swords, but they all fell dead before their blades could touch Rand. One by one, they suffered strokes and died by the will of the Wheel of Time. The court attendants burst into flame as Rand pointed his heron-marked cane at them. In the confusion, Mat grabbed his chain and jumped behind Tylin, drawing it over her throat. Tylin coughed and sputtered as Mat pulled it, choking her with the chain. But then Tylin twisted her body and sent Mat hurtling across the room with such force that he snapped the chain off. Tylin looked at Rand as he descended on her. He conjured up much rope from Saidin and used it to bind Tylin.

"We're going to leave you here," Rand said, "trapped and tied up. We will make out getaway before someone discovers you to untie you." He turned on the _te'le'vision. _"In the meantime, let this machine show you the meaning of pain."

…

"Hey, I think the power's fixed…" Beslan said as he came back into the room to find everybody dead. Tylin sat on her couch, tied up, facing the _te'le'vision _and moaning in agony. Beslan looked at the _te'le'vision _and beheld the most fearsome sight he had _ever seen. Tylin was being forced to watch GLEEman._

"_HEYYYYY!" cried Galad as he leapt into the gleeman club's meeting room. "I decided to join the gleeman club and toss away that stupid other club: the Children of Light." The other gleeman club members, Aram, Loial, __Masema, Moiraine and Brigitte, all cheered happily._

"_Oh I wanna kill but can't," Aram said, as he swept back his pretty hair and flaunted his bright tinker clothes with awkward pride._

"_You're not gonna tell me that ransacking villages and murdering babies in the Dragon's name is wrong too, right?" asked Masema, making Galad feel awkward._

"_I don't know if I'm alive or dead," Moiraine said from her wheelchair._

"_I, like, come from, like, another, like, time period," said Brigitte, whose tastelessly low-cut cheerleading dress read "I (heart) cleavage". _

"_I have no idea why I even exist," Loial confessed. _

"_Aw, you're ALL awkward, so I'll fit right in," replied Galad._

_Just then, the leader of the gleeman club, Thom, burst in._

"_Alright, let's practice for the BIG show!" Thom said. "From the top!" Disembodied music began to play._

"_We're awkward, we're together, but we're happy, can't you see?_

_LALA LA LA LA LA LA LA diversity!" sang the group as their voices changed to something that was made in a recording studio._

_From the Fortress of Light, next door, Pedron Nial looked down on the gleeman's club with disdain._

"_You stole Galad. One day, ONE DAY, I'll topple that gleeman club," snarled Pedron Nial. _

Tylin looked from the screen to her son but saw he was dead, slain by the show. She struggled against the rope. Nothing.

"_AH!" Aram giggled, "you just threw a slushie at me! HAW HAW!" _

Tylin tried holding her breath. Nothing.

"_How dare you try and undermine my club!" yelled Thom at Pedron when the two met in the hall._

"_Then it's war!" replied Pedron. "Grrr…how I hate your club."_

Tylin began to cry.

…

The rumor spread from village to village. Rand stole Mat's hat, became a pimp, destroyed Tylin's court, left her watching GLEEman, freed Mat and was now making his way north to hunt down and destroy Nyaneve for making a racist comment. No. Mat stole Rand's hat, became a member of Tylin's court while Nyaneve made her way north to escape GLEEman. No. Rand became a racist, stole Nyaneve's pimp, destroyed GLEEman, freed Tylin's court and was now making his way north to destroy Mat for making a racist comment. No. Tylin pimped out Nyaneve and freed her own court from racist comments that left Rand watching Mat while Mat's hat made its way north to hunt down and destroy the creators of GLEEman.

…

"Sometimes," said Mat as he walked through a village with Rand, Perrin and the girls, "I suspect the rumor mill is just retarded." Mat had regained his clothes, though his medallion was lost and his hat hadn't left Rand's head.

"Rand?" Mat asked, stepping past a village idiot.

"What?" Rand asked, craning to hear Mat, who stood one foot further to the right of Nyaneve's breasts than him.

"I said: 'Rand!' are you deaf?"

"Pardon?"

"I am not calling you Rand Al'Pimp."

"Fine, _Matthew,_" Rand replied. A gang of assassins tried to jump them, but they were trampled by a stampeding s'redit; a beast that was known as an "elephant" to normal people.

"Just give me back my hat," Mat said. "The ladies love it." Rand hugged his three girlfriends in closer.

"I know," Rand replied. Tuon, who trudged at the rear (she had replaced their packhorse after Perrin ate it,) groaned.

"What about the Dark One?" she asked under the weight of things.

"The Wheel of Time will take care of it. For now, we have a Nyaneve to punish," Min scolded. Tuon snorted and said something about taverns, or a word that made Mat think about them.

"How do you even know where she went?" Tuon asked, but then realized how stupid the question was.

"Easy," replied Min, consulting her compass. "We're getting closer to her breasts with each step." Of course! Tuon might as well have asked how they knew which way was up.

"And you're going to keep your face down," Perrin added in, "I've been on the market since Faile died. Rand's taken and I've got no competition from Mat because he can only date some woman we've yet to meet named the Daughter of the Nine Moons. So don't you let that face scare away any hot future girlfriends." Tuon's eyes lit up.

"Did you say Daughter of the Nine Moons?" asked Tuon. Tuon was that woman. The name referenced her butt, which was so big, everybody who was mooned by it was mooned nine times at once.

"Why yes," replied Perrin. "Is she your hot sister?" Tuon shook her head. Mat knew the look in her eyes and anticipated her words before she spoke them.

Five minutes later, Egwene and Elayne were fishing Mat's drowned corpse from the river. By the power of the Wheel of Time, Mat came back to life.

"How about some mouth to mouth?" he asked the girls. They both slapped him. Mat sat up and groaned. "You said Nyaneve was going to try and destroy the Wheel of Time itself?" Mat asked Rand. When Rand nodded, a thoughtful look coloured Mat's face.

That night, Mat escaped from his friends and rode Tuon northwards to catch up to Nyaneve.


	7. Ride of the Silverpike

Faile's column had just been ambushed. Sevanna's Shaido leapt out of the snow and hacked apart their escort. Those who were not killed were taken prisoner. Playing in with the rules of mandatory nudity, Faile had her clothes ripped off and was now tied up with her own socks.

"How am I not freezing to death?" Faile wondered aloud as the Shaido manhandled her towards the other prisoners. Her friends Chiad and Bain stood with them, also naked.

"Wait!" Chiad protested, "Shaido! She doesn't follow _Ji'eh'toe_!" The Shaido warriors paused to listen.

"You can't enslave her," added Bain. "Because she is a wetlander. You can't make her wear white!" There was a pause as the Shaido realized their predicament.

"Okay," replied the Shaido who was behind Faile.

JAB!

The tip of the Shaido's spear burst through Faile's chest. Faile looked down at her death-wound, then gave Bain and Chiad an annoyed look.

"Oops, my bad," grinned Chiad sheepishly.

"You two are f*****g idiots," Faile as she died. Bain felt so uneasy, she had to make a joke to lighten the mood.

"Well, that was a big _fail," _she said, elbowing Chiad, who did not get the pun. "Fail, you know, because her name is Faile."

"It's pronounced "Fa-Yeel," Chiad replied with a sideways glance.

"Oh light, is it? I've been calling her 'Fail' this whole time," Bain replied awkwardly.

"It's alright. I used to call Egwene 'Eh-Gwen-Ee'. And it wasn't until that bloody video game came out that I stopped calling Shai'tan 'Sh-I-Tan.' "

…

Mat knew Nyaneve was around here somewhere. Either she was in Tar Valon or she was in the surrounding country. Mat stood on a hill overlooking the city and the island it sat on. Dragonmount threw a tall shadow in the distance.

Mat stopped Tuon's gallop as a herd of horses stampeded past. Mat admired the beautiful herd (inadvertently dodging a crossbow shot as he leaned in to look at the beasts.)

"Look at that," Mat said, patting Tuon's mane. "Not everyday you see such a fine herd of animals." Tuon snorted, chomping down on her bit. She rocked Mat, causing him to move, thus dodging the thrown spear of the same assassin who's bolt had just missed. "Wait, those horses, something's wrong." They were moving slower than they should and their necks were tied together. Mat looked to the rear of the herd and saw, near a cluster of trees, was Nyaneve and Lan.

"Harder Lan!" Nyaneve yelled. "Yes! Harder Lan! HARDER! HARDER!" Mat galloped up to the two.

"Am I interrupting something?" Mat asked.

Nyaneve was suspended in the air. Her hands were holding onto the nearest tree while her braid was tied to the herd of horses. Lan was cracking a whip to spur the horses to move faster and pull Nyaneve's braid more.

"Harder Lan!" Nyaneve cried, "make them run faster. The horses aren't pulling hard enough, and that makes me MAD!"

"Dude," Lan said, pointing at Mat.

A few minutes later, the herd of horses had been let loose. Tuon was fastened by her reins to a tree and was grazing peacefully.

'I hate horses,' thought Mat as Tuon raised her tail.

"So you want to join me, huh?" Nyaneve smiled, "tired of your destiny too?" She shook her head. "You can't join until you give me something." Mat dug into his pockets and surrendered his two photographs of the Aes Sedai coronation.

"Now you got to be punished. A good caning should do."

Minutes later…

"I understand the caning, but why do I have to be dressed in a baby bonnet and a bib?"

THWACK!

"AHHHH!"

Minutes later…

"Okay, so why haven't you broken into Tar Valon and the White Tower?" asked Mat, sitting uncomfortably. "I mean, duh, Wheel of Time?" In his head, Mat imagined himself striding through the streets of Tar Valon as Aes Sedai and soldiers alike dropped dead at his feet when they moved to stop him. For some reason, everyone favourite pretty boy, Galad, was there too.

'Get out of my fantasy, I'm not gay,' Mat told Galad. Light! Since he discovered his fate with Tuon, he'd been getting worse and worse. Mat beat the unwelcome image from his head, thus dodging the assassin who was now trying his longbow, having put aside his crossbow and spears.

"Because!" Nyaneve stammered (pulling her braid with her hands, feet, and teeth) "we…BWAH!" Nyaneve was consumed in fiery light that sent a shockwave of Saidar out, flattening the trees and blowing back the arrow that almost hit Mat and killing its shooter.

…

DO NOT TOUCH CALLANDOR read the sign. Rand, who had stopped by the Stone to pick up Callandor, had just touched it. Without meaning to (or trying to) he had partially cleaned Saidin, which was still dirty from the Dark One's touch ever since he had used it as an ashtray. He sheathed the weapon and gated back to his friends, who were on the road to Tar Valon.

…

"I…feel…dizzy," Nyaneve said. An angreal, which she had forgotten about, fell out of her pocket. Mat put it back in. It was a statuette of a woman giving its viewer the finger. Little did she know of its connection to Rand's fat man angreal and the huge statue of a woman with a glass orb, which lay buried in a far off land. With Callandor, Rand was cleansing Saidin with every touch he laid on the sword. Of course, the effort required the energy of the bearer of the angreal Nyaneve had.

…

"Hey guys," Rand said to his friends as he tightened his belt. His hand went near Callandor.

…

"Uh!" Mat drew back in alarm as the figure glowed with power.

…

Rand's hand moved away from Callandor.

…

The figure's glow vanished.

Mat, Lan and Nyaneve stood untouched amidst the ruin. "Now, what did you say?"

"Those defenses," Nyaneve pointed to the walls of Tar Valon. Mat felt afraid.

The walls were held by rows and rows of cannon, which were designed to look like seashells, rolling waves and the like. Rows of soldiers stood on the ramparts, clutching spears that looked like stone trees. Here and there, stood an Aes Sedai and each was continuously and violently spewing misandrist slogans. Over their heads rose watchtowers, manned by machine gunners, anti-air missiles and all sorts of radar equipment. The bridge to Tar Valon was defended by a band of red-faced warriors who swore to die, rather than give up, every time someone came to cross the bridge. The gratings that led to the sewers were watched by mice in armour. Tiny mouse warships patrolled the waters, on the lookout for invaders.

"I don't think the Wheel can save us here," Mat sighed in fear. In stories, heroes got lucky breaks. In real life, the heroes never got any lucky breaks. Things never just appeared. They had to fight their way through all dangers with what they had, and sometimes, it wasn't always glorious. Mat thought in frustration at how easy heroes who dwelt in stories had it, in contrast to him, who had to earn his lucky breaks. In real life, no godlike waves of state-of-the-art attack helicopters came out of nowhere, firing rockets at your enemies. No columns of tanks in blitzkrieg formation grumbled across the plains to give unexpected aid when you needed it most, like in stories. In real life, things had to be done realistically.

"Do you hear that?" asked Nyaneve. The three of them turned to look south, where the sound was coming from.

In the sky was a godlike wave of state-of-the-art attack helicopters (relics from the Age of Legends), their missile pods loaded and ready. Below them, in blitzkrieg formation, was a column of battle tanks. They roared past Lan and Nyaneve, firing furiously at the walls.

"DUDE!" Lan roared in alarm, dodging a passing tank. One of them ran over Tuon, miraculously making her less ugly. She got back up, unhurt.

"Si-si-silver-si-si-silver-si-si-silver-si-silverpike!" sang Siuan's voice on a loudspeaker from the helicopter fleet in tune with "Ride of the Valkyries," which was blaring from the lead helicopter. Mat could see the panicked defenders vanishing in explosions while the high-tech ordnance blew them apart. Smart bombs (relics from the Age of Legends) slammed with precision into the watch towers while, overhead UAVs (relics from the Age…you know the drill,) got recon photos of the city.

"Hey you Red Ajah biyatches, I'm tossing you to the lionfish!" taunted Siuan as her helicopter swept over the ramparts, raking the defenders with fire from its door gun.

"YA!" Mat yelled, drawing his glaive and rushing down the hill (not even he knew where he'd been carrying it.) Lan chased him and dove at the band of fearless warriors guarding the bridge.

"Ho! Prepare to fight!" yelled the leader, looking as a farmer as he rolled his cart onto the bridge. "No," the leader said, "another false alarm…"

Lan carved into him. Mat followed, slashing and stabbing men with his glaive/spear/halberd/stick-thing. Nyaneve followed, paddle in hand. She dropped enemy warriors by paddling their butts.

All three were cast back though, landing in a painful heap. Weaves of Saidar filled the air as a Red Ajah Aes Sedai crawled over the side of the bridge. She wore a low cut dress and had eyes like a cat whose tail had just been stepped on. The last defending man was dead, but they were, all together, not worth this one Aes Sedai.

"Kill all men, kill all men," snarled the woman, pulling out a pair of shears. She looked at Mat's pants. "You first, stripling!" Looking at his pants? Shears? Kill all men?

Mat cried and begged her to spare his jewels, but Nyaneve came to his rescue. She dove in at the woman, hands outstretched. She dodged a cut from those shears and took hold of the Aes Sedai's swooping neckline on the red dress she wore. With a furious pull, she pulled the bottom of the low neck up and up and up, until red fabric was touching the Aes Sedai's chin. With a few safety pins, Nyaneve pinned the woman's dress in place and stepped back.

"My bosom!" the Red Ajah sank to her knees as she looked at her well-covered chest. Not a single bump of cleavage showed. "AHHHHH!" The Red Ajah melted like a wax sculpture and her empty clothes burned with blue fire until they were ashes.

"What the hell?" Mat asked.

"Tell no one of what you have seen," Nyaneve murmured ominously.

As the battle ended and the tanks and helicopters returned the way they came. A single person came parachuting down from the sky. It was Siuan. So that's where she went, she was summoning aid. It wasn't because the Creator forgot she went with Rand's group.

"Fish," Siuan said. She looked at the three. "Hello Nyaneve," she said. Nyaneve exploded with fire and magical energy.

…

"So the entrance to the Ways would be somewhere here," Rand said as he used Callandor to etch a crude map into the dust of Far Madding. "We can make it to Tar Valon in a heartbeat."

"What if we're too late?" asked Elayne. "Nyaneve might say another prejudiced comment. She could offend, Light forbid, the _muslims._" A cold wind blew and uncomfortable thoughts formed.

"We have to hurry," Rand said. "But if we move, we can nail her in Tar Valon." He drove Callandor forcefully into the etching that represented the city. "Come on."

…

"What in the name of silverpike?" asked Siuan as the fire and energy disappeared, showing Nyaneve and her belongings had turned black. They crumbled to ash, leaving her eyes cartoonishly unhurt. The Wheel of Time repaired her.

"Who were they?" Nyaneve asked, brushing ash off her clothes.

"They were my father's old war buddies," Siaun said. "They fight like lionfish."

"Hey, you know a lionfish is an itty-bitty, brilliantly-coloured, tropical fish that eats shrimp?" Nyaneve pointed out. "BWAH!" she exploded with light and fire.

…

Rand had sheathed Callandor, but had put his hand on its sheath to lift it so it didn't drag on a rock as he stepped over it.

…

"So what now?" Siuan asked.

"We invade the tower," Nyaneve began. "We…BWAH!"

…

A fly had landed on Callandor. Rand had brushed it off.

…

"In through the gates. The defenders are down, so the way's clear to the tower," Siuan said. Nyaneve didn't finish her nod.

"BWAH!"

…

Rand and his group had settled down. Rand was listening to his music player. He had Callandor laid out across his lap and was rocking his head to the beat of the song.

"Here comes the drum solo," Perrin said as he did air guitar in tune with the song. The drum solo came.

"Pat-patta-patta-pat-pat!" Rand beat different parts of Callandor with his hands.

…

Nyaneve, Siuan, Lan and Mat stepped in through the open gates to the city,

"I…"

"BWAH!"

"…think…"

"BWAH!"

"…I…"

"BWAH!"

"…see…"

"BWAH!"

"…the…"

"BWAH!"

"…tower," Mat said as energy from Nyaneve's repeated explosions whooshed around him.

"BWAH!"

"Dude," Lan looked up at the mighty structure in awe.

"You got that right," Mat said as another one of Nyaneve's explosions cleared the way for them. By now, the streets were nicely depopulated, the blast killing all except the people who mattered. Looking up, the party could see multi-coloured lights in the topmost windows on the tower.

"Is someone being stilled, or gentled?" whispered Nyaneve. "BWAH!"

"No, that light is not Saidar," whispered Siaun. "But something far worse." Mat wasn't interested.

"We're not leaving the White Tower without visiting the gift shop first," he said, eyeing the entrance.

"BWAH!"

"Right," Siuan said, still not looking away from the lights. Mat asked her what was wrong. "Those lights, it's _Ajahfest._" A cold wind blew.

"The Ajahrest? What's that?"

"It's where Elaida will be and Elaida is it's our best bet that if anyone knows how to destroy the Wheel of Time, it'd be her," replied Nyaneve, "and we won't be able to get to her if she's in Ajahfest. She'll be surrounded by scores of Red Ajah. Our only hope to get to her is to blast through them." Lan's eyes widened and Siuan looked uncomfortable.

"Dude?" asked Lan.

"Yeah, what Lan said," replied Siaun.

"I AM referring to those," replied Nyaneve, "we must break into the White Tower and steal the turtle cannons…BWAH!"

…

The glittering sign read one word:

"AJAHFEST."

Elaida had turned her throne room into a dance floor. Bright lights flashed, music played as loud as it could and hundreds of Aes Sedai danced on the floor. In the center, a circle of women formed. In the middle, the novices were squaring off against their seniors. Though the younger women were supple and swift on their toes, the seasoned Aes Sedai used Saidar to help them bust moves.

Elaida twirled through the air, held on flows of Saidar, and landed on her feet. The novices shrank back as the circle cheered for Elaida and the Red Ajah group at her back.

"Alright bitches!" she looked at the yellow and green Ajahs. "Who's gonna challenge the funkiest Ajah of them all? Go red!"

"RED! RED! RED!" all the Red Ajah present chanted. The other Ajahs booed them. It was so loud, no one heard someone yell "black, FTW!"

"Uh, no," Elaida stopped and pointed through the crowd, "there is no Hello Kitty Ajah." One woman, in a pink shawl with Hello Kitty stickers stuck over the coloured bands of her real Ajah, slunk away. "Now," Elaida laughed, "anyone up to challenge the red?"

"WE WILL!"

The music skipped and all talking stopped. The room turned as one to regard the challengers. Gasps rose and hands covered mouths. Not…_the Black Tower. _

In military ranks, two-dozen Asha'man, led by Mazrim, marched in on the dance. They wore black tuxedos and sword-shaped cufflinks.

"Humph, men," grumbled Elaida as the Asha'man joined her Red Ajah in the middle of the circle. The two groups stared each other down.

"Asha'MAN, baby," whispered Mazrim.

The contest began.


	8. The Creator is losing track of things

The Creator sat in his office and regarded the piece of Saidin, now freshly cleansed by the dragon. The piece of Saidin still smelt of fabric softener and was drier-fresh and warm. The Creator allowed himself a quick cuddle with it before resuming his work.

"So, Aram," the Creator said to the man at his desk, "are you sure you're qualified? I need some good men on the ground if I'm to railroad the plot back on track."

"I am," Aram replied, "did you see me on GLEEman?" The Creator shrugged, not even sure what GLEEman was a parody of.

"Right, well, I think I can use you to stop Nyaneve. A-R-A-M?"

"Yes." The Creator wrote it down.

"And you're an Aiel?"

"I'm a tinker."

"Then what's with the sword?"

"I don't follow the Way of the Leaf."

"Wait, are you that hunter from Chiendelna?"

"No, that's Lord Luc."

"But you were still involved in that plotline."

"Which plotline?"

"The one with Lord Luc…nevermind." The Creator was regarding a chart he'd taped to his desk. It showed the various plotlines that were in place and which characters were involved when. His nickname for it was "the squid."

"Alright, off to the lands of world you go," the Creator pulled a lever and Aram's chair plunged him down a trapdoor that opened at his feet. "Next?"

The doors to his office opened and the Creator caught sight of Gaul, Cenn, Bayle, Carridin, Hurin (_who should have retired after book 2_), Verin, Leya (_yeah, remember her?_)_,_ Bornhald, Olver and Bael. He consulted his list that read "unimportant people."

"Allana!" the Creator called. No response came. Then, the Creator remembered…

…

"_What did you just do?" Rand asked, checking himself for damage._

"_I've bonded you as a Warder," said Allana. Rand nodded, recollecting that the Aes Sedai specifically forbade doing that. Allana, in true Aes Sedai fashion, began her lecture on why he should listen. Rand could feel her tying invisible strings to his wrists, his legs, his neck, his nipples and his armpit hair as she went on and on. No, he would not dance, prance, do the hokey-pokey, or the YMCA on Aes Sedai strings._

"_You have five seconds to unbond me," Rand replied._

"…_if I keep you a warder, I can keep an eye on you…"_

"_Four seconds."_

"…_and the Aes Sedai can advise you…"_

"_Three seconds." It's time someone stood up to these megalomaniacs in shawls. _

"…_you are the Dragon reborn…"_

"_Two seconds." Allana would probably be disowned for violating policy anyway._

"…_need our help…"_

"_One second." Looks like there'd be one less annoying, useless character in the book._

"…_it's for your own good."_

"_BALEFIRE! YAAAAAAAA!" POOF! Allana, and all she had done, was vaporized by the flames, leaving a perfect hole in the inn._

_Somewhere, people applauded. _

…

"Oh yeah," the Creator recalled sheepishly. Even he was losing track of the plot. "Verin!"

…

The Ways.

This place had been created during the Age of Legends. Back then, it shone with light and all the various paths were connected. However _blah blah blah blah…_

In layman's terms, long ago, this place had been cool. Now it was a dump.

Rand pulled a stone leaf off the carving of the stone tree and watched as the portal to the Ways that opened up. It lay upon a hole on a stone wall in Far Madding and showed him nothing but blackness. Rand gathered his courage and stepped through. However, in the darkness he overstepped the ledge on the other side and went plummeting to his death.

_**The End. **_

_**The Shadow Attacks and Some Other Stuff Happens. A Wheel of Time Fanfic by Nicholasakira.**_

_**Cast:**_

_**Rand – Ginger McBadass **_

_**Nyaneve – Bitchy Ballbuster **_

_**Elayne – Rosy Skank**_

_**Egwene – Snarky Sue**_

_**Ishamael**__** All the Forsaken – Loser McFail**_

_**Perrin – Bob Johnson (oh wait)**_

_**Moghidean (the forsaken who actually washes dishes as a maidservant) **_

_*Rewind*_

Take two! And….! Action!

Rand stepped through the portal and into the Ways. He held up his torch and gawked at the marvel. The entire void of the Ways was taken up by a network of floaty islands, connected by rickety bridges. Here and there, doorways to other places in the world rose up. In place of a sky was a void of pure blue that read messages of doom in blocky white letters. In the Age of Legends, the people would call this the Bl'u'e S'creen of De'ath.

"We have to hurry," Rand said as Aviendha, Elayne, Egwene and Min hurried through. He gave his heron-marked cane a twirl, but saw Perrin was missing. He hurried outside and caught him taking a wiz on the carving of the stone tree. Perrin barked in displeasure as Rand dragged him by the collar into the Ways.

"Alright," said Elayne, "now, you know which of these portals goes into Tar Valon? Perrin, any ideas?"

Perrin was barking unintelligibly and did not answer. He could smell shadowspawn.

"Everywhere we go," sang a distant voice. The adventurers took cover and saw, on a lower platform, was a warband of trollocs led by a fade. So, the shadow was on the advance. "People always ask us. Who we are."

"RPG time," Aviendha said darkly, drawing her spears. Egwene put a hand on her friend's shoulder.

"And so we kill them," sang the shadowspawn.

"No, this ploy requires some diplomacy, fast-thinking and some cunning," Egwene grinned mischievously. "And I've some experience in Aes Sedai plotting. They'll be like puppets in my hands." Rand nodded in appreciation at his friend's talents. "Daes Dae'mar, or the game of houses, taught me all I need to know about negotiating."

"Seriously Egwene, shut the **** up about the game of houses," Rand blurted, his sanity fleeing. Now the Game of Houses had TWO names?

Moments later…

"We are the shadowspawn!" sang the fade, keeping his cloak (which didn't move in the wind because it was comatose and needed daily care from a registered nurse) pulled over his sensitive skin and walking on his cane. The trollocs repeated the line. "The mighty, mighty, shadowspawn."

"Ahoy fellow shadowspawn!"

The fade went quiet as Egwene walked out in front of his warband's path. She wore a cooking pot on her head and carried a ladle over one shoulder like one of the trolloc's scythe-like swords. She had one eye closed and grinned stupidly. In her free hand, she held a huge, obnoxious sign, shaped like an arrow that pointed to her that read "I am a Trolloc" in marker.

Rand capped the marker he held and peered down from his hiding place.

"I see a portal in her aura," whispered Min from beside him. "She's gonna lead us to Tar Valon. I also see…UH!" No doubt, Min had seen the image of what Egwene had planned with Gawyn in her (mistakenly) secret crush on him.

_Toot. _

"Light help us," whispered Min, "the Black Wind."

"No," whispered Perrin. "That was me. Just quiet and let Egwene do her plotting."

"So," the fade said to Egwene when she'd explained herself, "you want to reach Tar Valon."

"Yes me hearties, yarrr," Egwene replied. Rand slapped his face.

"She's got her talk-like-a-pirate mixed up with talk-like-a-shadowspawn," he whispered. "We're finished, unless those shadowspawn are complete idiots."

One of the chicken-beaked trollocs clucked a warning to its fade, who leaned on his cane. Though this fade was as skinny as a starving cheerleader, he was a macho hulk compared to most fades.

"What will you give me in return for my information?" asked the fade.

"Why, some good sea-dog rum, a whole chest o' booty an a good old sack of guineas me scurvy lad," growled back Egwene. "Yarrr."

"Right," the fade was cautious. Something wasn't right. "What kind of trolloc are you?"

"A trolloc I be me hearty. Didn'tchya read me sign?" Egwene asked with a shake of her crude device.

"Didn't you read mine?" the eyeless fade pointed at his own sign, which was bright neon and read "BLIND" in capital letters. His supernatural sight still had trouble seeing beneath Egwene pot-helmet, thanks to the fade's albinism. "Fine." When he spoke, he spoke fast, "follow that path up there and turn left. Now your turn. Pay up."

With a kick, Egwene booted the fade's cane over the edge. The disabled shadowspawn fell and Egwene charged away. The fade could not get back up thanks to his many disabilities. The trollocs could not give chase without trampling their fragile master to death, thus killing themselves, for their lives were bound to their fade's. That was one special feature Shai'tan regretted having installed. It had been such an impulse purchase, but now it was hanging around the trollocs, making them weaker and Shai'tan couldn't get rid of it. In a way, it was a lot like his wife. One by one, they had to jump over the fallen fade. A few fell off the side and created trolloc-shaped holes in the Bl'u'e S'creen of De'ath.

"Up the stairs," Min called, "I'll hold them off."

The trollocs rampaged up the stairs, but paused when Min got in the way.

"Hello," Min was dressed in a turban and wore more jewelry than a person that the Aiel had punished for stealing jewelry, though more clothes than said person, who was (obviously) naked. This form of punishment had a name in the Old Tongue. It was hick's'd'ajgip's'gs.

No. Not that.

Jgs''g''s'gs'g'ds'h'gs''''f'g'sh''. That's a better Old Tongue word.

It has more apostrophes.

Min was only visible from the torso up and pretended to be mechanical. She had locked herself in a half wood case with glass (built from Saidar) with windows to show her from the waist up. A slot for quarters lay beneath the flashy words _Min the Fortune Teller_. Egwene's sign knelt against her, the arrow now facing Min.

"I can tell your future," Min said in a campy, mystical voice as her friends got away. "Line up and I'll read your aura."

"That only works once," one of the trollocs said, raising his sword.

"Oh crap," Min choked, wondering how she could get out. Sometimes people used Saidar without thinking. "Um…you stupid meatheads?"

In the distance, the Black Wind began to close in.

"Don't touch my girlfriend!" Rand burst forth and killed the offending trolloc with a demonstration of hare poops in the reeds with his heron-marked cane.

"Let's go!" Rand called, hauling out Min and fleeing with her up a flight of floating stairs, following the fade's directions. Naturally, they outran the trollocs. In the distance, he could hear the Black Wind coming. "The greatest pimp of them all won't be felled by the Black Wind, hurry!"

"**Please hang up and try your call again,**" sang the mysterious, disembodied voices of the Black Wind over and over. "**Please hang up. This is a recording."**

"Run, the Black Wind is getting closer!" Min cried as they caught up with the others.

"**Please hang up and try your call again.**"

Before them, the doorway out of the Ways opened up before them. They hurled themselves through just as the voices got to them. In a hurry, Aviendha closed the portal. The party let out a sigh of relief. Light knew what terror awaited those victims caught by the Black Wind.

"Oh wait I left my lip gloss in the _Min the Fortune Teller_ box," Min said, opening the portal.

"**PLEASE HANG UP AND TRY YOUR CALL AGAIN!" **A supernatural blackness filled the room.

"No!" Egwene, Elayne and Aviendha cried in unison, closing the portal. The darkness and the voices vanished.

The portal had led them to a room with marble walls, marble sinks…

"We're in the ladies room of the White Tower," Elayne remarked, recognizing it.

"These Ways sure do open up in funny places," remarked Perrin.

"If you could build a doorway that could lead anywhere, wouldn't you use the power to make peeping a lot easier?" asked Rand.

"I guess I would, if I was a total perv," Perrin replied. "Wait, you can Gate, can't you?" Rand just grinned and gave his pimp-hat a twirl.

...

Jump, swing, twirl, jig, cha-cha, yeah!

Elaida and Mazrim had each other matched. Saidin and saidar weaves thickened the air. The music hit their moves right on the spot. The dancing witnessed here, tonight, was unlike anything ever seen in the lands of…place. Mortals could not dance like this. A number of Asha'man lay dead, having been slain by Saidin's taint. But as the dance ended, fewer of them died until they could stand in one place and not experience any deaths. Everyone had their own gimmick in this world. Tinkers were worthless, the Aiel were violent, the Red Ajah were gendercidal, the Sea Folk liked to act nautical and thought their ships were guys, the Seanchan were exotic for its own sake, the ogier were hippies, the forsaken failed at everything they did and the Asha'man died randomly.

"Saidin," whispered Mazrim, "it is clean."

"lol wut?" asked Elaida. The dance ended and the music shut off.

"Asha'man, win!" cried one half of the room.

"Red Ajah win!" cried the other half.

"Shut it you man-o-philes!" Elaida would have to schedule another dance-off. "Saidin is clean?" she looked at Mazrim's waist. "And pull up your pants. I can see your boxers." She nodded to the surviving Asha'man. "All of you. Pull em up. Geez. Men are such worthless animals."

"Asha'man!" bellowed Mazrim like a military officer, "grip!" The Asha'man gripped their trousers. "Asha'man! Squeeze!" They did so. "Asha'man, pull!"

The Aes Sedai exploded, there was no other word for it. Women flew apart in gruesome burst of blood and fire. Their dense ranks were wracked with human explosions left and right. A pile of human remains began to form.

"I said 'pull' you dumbasses, not 'kill' " Mazrim called over the carnage. The carnage abated and the Asha'man looked sheepishly at their master as they gave half-hearted jerks at their pants

"Elaida!" called one of the surviving Aes Sedai, "so many sisters died…"

"The wheel weaves as the wheel wills," replied Elaida. "Now how about getting started on building my gigantic tower?" She looked at the Asha'man. "Your boxers are still showing."

"I think we…" Mazrim began.

"Hold it right there!"

All the Aes Sedai gasped as the doors to the room opened and in came Siuan, Nyaneve, Mat and Lan. Mat was decked from head to toe in merchandise from the gift shop. He wore an imitation of the Aes Sedai shawl and carried stone replicas of the seal to the Dark One's prison in his hands. He wore a t-shirt that read "I survived the White Tower," above the cartoon of an innocent tourist being electrocuted by an Aes Sedai he'd offended. He wore sunglasses with rims shaped like the white flame and carried a travel guide to Tar Valon and a copy of Aes Sedai for Ye Olde Fooles™ under one arm. He wore a baseball cap that said "gentle me, baby" beneath a picturesque silhouette of an erotically posed Aes Sedai.

Each of them, including Mat, carried a blunderbuss, which the Aes Sedai recognized as the dreaded turtle cannons. They backed away, empty hands up.

"Ha!" laughed Mazrim at the newcomers, "what foolish little children!"

BANG! went Mat's cannon. A round missile shot from his turtle cannon and exploded into Mazrim. The missile immediately turned into a malleable substance that wrapped around Mazrim's torso. A sound, like the sound of scissors snipping and cloth tearing echoed through the room. Mazrim looked down at what he wore. It was a cozy cotton turtleneck sweater, which the shot had turned itself into. It fit him snugly and he almost considered thanking Mat for the gift.

"I told you," grunted Nyaneve in frustration as she tied an anvil to her braid and tossed it out the window, "it only works on Aes Sedai."

"Oops," Mat grinned.

"I'm gonna paddle you when we're done," Nyaneve hissed. Mat grinned.

"You wanna touch my bumb?" Mat asked. Discarding her Turtle Cannon, Nyaneve grabbed her braid with both hands and pulled it, her face turning angry to the point of caricature.

"God, only a man would be stupid enough to make that mistake," Elaida remarked as the Red Ajah enthusiastically agreed. "If I had my way, every boy would be rounded up and have their organs slowly dragged out of their mouths with hot iron hooks and left to die agonizing deaths, unable to scream or sob for their mothers because their mouths are full of blood and flesh, so there'd be no more people to turn into men."

"They're life unworthy of life if you ask me," Nyaneve added, her face steaming. All the Red Ajah agreed, adding their own comments on how stupid and useless men were.

"Geez," Mat mumbled. "There's something wrong with the women in this world." Only Siuan hadn't taken part in the exchange.

"So, the rebel that made herself Amyrlin Seat," Siuan snarled at Elaida. " I may be stilled, but I can still take back the throne. Silverpike, silverpike. silverpike."

"The throne?" Elaida pointed to it. "The Wheel of Time willed me to upgrade it with custom leather, add a reclining function and a cup holder and to build some headphone jacks into it." Indeed, she had, though her motives likely lay elsewhere. "A throne worthy of a true Amyrlin Seat."

"No woman who acts as you can ever be Amyrlin Seat," replied Siuan.

"Oh? And a fisherman's girl can?"

"The Amyrlin Seat is a responsibility that you cannot handle. Lionfish."

"What exactly is an Amyrlin? And why is it so important that it's a seat?" asked Mat, fumbling through the chapter on "terms" in his newly-purchased copy of "_Aes Sedai for ye olde fooles™." _Amyrlin's deficit of apostrophes meant it was not an Old Tongue word.

"Don't talk when the women are speaking, Mat!" thundered Nyaneve, Siuan, Elaida and the amassed Aes Sedai (even those who did not know his name) in unison.

"Come, you did not come here all the way from Salad Bar just to tell me this," smiled Elaida. Siuan stomped her foot.

"I DID!" Siuan snarled, "and you know what? I feel good!" Elaida was silenced. In movies, Elaida's line was supposed to be followed with a slow, somber talk about the plot or perhaps an embarrassing request. But this was real life, not a story. In real life, dialogue was awkward and didn't always go where you wanted. In stories, dialogue was always to the point.

"Well actually," Nyaneve began as she released her braid. She went right to the point. "I want to destroy the Wheel of Time." She nodded to Mat. "I have a tavern…tara'vern…tara-whatever…here to deflect all danger and make my journey a breeze. Lan suggested I bring Perrin but I was ejected from the group, so I made do with Mat. You are going to tell me how I can destroy the wheel."

"If I don't?"

"You'll look really nice in a turtleneck," Nyaneve grinned. Elaida stepped back and blinked in fear, turning her low neckline to face slightly away from Nyaneve's turtle cannon.

"Now, no need to get dramatic," Elaida shooed everyone outside, the Asha'man too. When the others were gone, Elaida cleared her throat.

"The Wheel of Time can be destroyed," Elaida began, "I know because I have seen the Wheel of Time itself. It is a lot closer than you think."

"How do you destroy it?" asked Nyaneve. Elaida smiled enigmatically.

"In order to destroy it, you have to know its secret," Elaida continued, "it is the darkest of secrets." She looked deeply into Nyaneve's eyes. "You see, the Wheel of Time's secret is that…"

She gasped painfully and looked down at the turtleneck sweater she wore. All eyes turned to the shooter.

"If you want something done, you have to do it yourself," the Creator said, reloading his turtle cannon. As Elaida fell, he turned at Nyaneve.

"Dude!" Lan roared as a he jumped into the way of the Creator's shot. Lan groaned in pain as a beautiful turtleneck came into being across his body. Nyaneve and Siuan fired Saidar weaves at the Creator, forcing him to teleport away.

"I'll be back!" shrieked the Creator's voice from nowhere. "The final battle will happen!"

Everyone rushed to Elaida's side. The woman was already melting, making her almost as ugly as Tuon.

"I'm melting! I'm melting!" cursed Elaida's melting face, (now one meter away from Nyaneve's breasts). Nyaneve leaned over her and begged her to speak.

"I cannot help you now," gasped Elaida. "You….must…find…the…black…Aes Sedai. They…will…lead…you…to…the…Wheel…of…Time."

Then Elaida was dead: melted completely. Nyaneve rose up, dripping bits of Elaida off her skirt.

"The black Aes Sedai?" asked Nyaveve. "The Black Ajah! Siuan, ready the turtle cannons. We have some Black Ajah to hunt."

…

Right now, as with many parts of the story, the Fellowship of the Ring was separated into a number of parties all doing their own thing. Nyaneve and her party was sorting through the White Tower's dusty archives for clues on where the Black Ajah met. Rand and his party was currently escaping the White Tower ladies room.

"Hey, look," Mat was intrigued as he lifted a leather-bound tome from the shelf. It read "why there are no male Aes Sedai. FOR THE BLUE AJAH ONLY."

"Dude," gloomy old Lan mumbled.

"The Black Ajah have to be in her somewhere," Nyaneve fretted, pulling down a roster of all the Aes Sedai who'd ever committed a misdeed. "Start searching the archives for these women."

"Tell you the truth, I've had bad experiences in searching gigantic archives using the names of women as a keyword," Siuan replied, referring to the intur-net. Mat, on the other hand, grinned.

"Hm," Nyaneve said, reading the list. "Gitara? Hey, she's that woman who died moments after foretelling the Dragon's birth at the end of the Aiel War. Killed by the strain of the deed, or perhaps by fate itself. Says here she was a real heavy partier."

"Yeah, she was. She liked to pretend to foretell terrible dooms for laughs," Siuan replied. "But she had a terrible peanut allergy and that morning Moiraine and I had made peanut butter sandwiches and forgot to wash our hands when we tended her."

"Hm?" asked Nyaneve, but Mat spoke out, distracting the women.

"This book says the male Aes Sedai were killed off because the female Aes Sedai kept asking them if their dresses made them look fat," Mat remarked, "and the oaths forced the males to tell the truth." He looked at Siuan. "Did you know that?"

"Well…" Siuan stumbled over her words. "I…um…well, silverpike." Mat looked at her blankly. "Right," Siuan sighed in sad defeat, "I guess I have no more purpose in this story." She walked out the door. "I'm gonna go fall in love with Garyth Byrne."

"Useless woman, almost as dumb and useless as…light forbid, a _man,_" Nyaneve grumbled. "Always on and on about fish."

"Not exactly," replied Mat. "You know what silverpike is slang for, right?" Mat, being a womanizing party animal, knew his informalities like the average reader knew the plot. Wait, bad example.

"I don't know," Nyaneve replied. "Do you know?" she asked Lan.

"Dude," Lan said with a chuckle. Nyaneve's eyes widened and Mat laughed his sides off.

"That's horrible! Siuan was saying THAT all this time!" Nyaneve lashed her braid to a racing car and signaled the driver to start driving.

"Yup!" Mat giggled.


	9. Oh, good job Rand, you broke the world

No one knew how close the hordes of the Blight were to Tar Valon.

…

Outside the ladies room stood droves of people, all sent down by the Creator with instructions to get fate back on track. Rand opened the door, saw them and his eyes burned out.

"You're the dragon!" someone shouted. "You have the wound on your side."

Rand remembered…

"_I'll get you away from here, father," Rand said to Tam, dragging him away from the farm that had been invaded by trollocs. _

"_Hi," Tam said in his unconsciousness. "got home from the war…woman, in the snow, dead…had just given birth…couldn't let baby freeze…yes. Name him Rand."_

_Rand froze in horror. Tam wasn't his father? He dragged Tam onwards._

"_I swear I won't lose him in the woods like I did with the other babies we adopted," Tam continued._

_Rand froze, horrified._

"_Hey Marci get up," Tam said, still in his half-asleep stupor and Rand moved to drag him. "That sounded like my wife…get out before she gets here…Hi honey…no I didn't have anyone over."_

_Rand froze again, intrigued._

"_Hi Mick…saw me with Marci? You won't tell my wife, she'll divorce me….what do you think you doing? Quiet down or I'll make you….light forgive me, I've killed him." Rand felt odd as he dragged Tam onwards. "How do I hide the body…axe…how do I dispose of the pieces?...Honey! Dinner! I made beef stew!" Rand wretched and dragged his father onwards._

"_Hi baby Rand," Tam whispered. Rand paused. "Rand, don't cry, I just need to take one of your kidneys to pay a gambling debt…it's a knife…See? That didn't hurt...Sell your kidney…No dear, nothing wrong with the baby…blood? That's just cherry jam."_

_Rand flopped his father down and started back to Emond's Field without him._

A lot of people thought Rand got that ugly mark on his side from Ishamael. In reality, it had been his father's handiwork. But it didn't hurt, showing it off.

"So this proves that I am the Dragon Reborn," Rand said, showing off the scar on his flank. "But even the Dragon Reborn needs some privacy."

"Dragon!" shouted a farmer at the head of a retinue, "a man calling himself the Prophet is rampaging across the land! He keeps knocking on our doors to proselytize to us, even at dinner!"

"Shut up!" Rand yelled.

"Dragon!" shouted a female ogier, "We've a shotgun wedding with Loial's name on it. Where is he?"

"Shut up!" Rand yelled.

"Dragon!" shouted Ingtar, "an intern at the heritage museum misplaced the Horn of Valere!"

"Shut up!" Rand yelled.

"Dragon!" sobbed a woman, "the Shaido attacked my city! They took all the young people from 18 up, said they were gai'shain, stripped them naked and herded them off!"

"Shut u…what?" Rand was intrigued as he imagined a whole city's worth of young women being peeled. "Tell me what happened, except slowly. Very slowly."

"The Shaido!" Storming through the crowd came a thick block of maidens of the spear, Aiel who were literally wedded to their weapons. As with all marriages, it went downhill from the honeymoon. Some of the maidens argued with their spears, complained that their spears weren't sensitive enough, or worse, went out to try unclaimed spears (or claimed spears) when their current spears weren't around. Many had troupes of half-Aiel, half-spear children trotting behind them. "Dragon, we are your troops," they declared. "The Shaido have been sighted. How do we kill them…? Dragon? Dragon?" Rand's eyes had been replaced by glowing yellow stars as he regarded the regiment of maidens.

"Welcome to the team, llllllladies," Rand said, his pearly-whites gleaming through his kingly grin. He chucked the human/spear children out the window.

Inside the ladies room, Elayne, Egwene, Min and Aviendha were unimpressed. They had just escaped the maw of a very hungry toilet that came alive and attacked them (something about bubbles of evil escaping the Dark One's prison).

"Where did all these people come from?" Elayne asked as she swept up pieces of the shattered toilet-monster.

"I saw in their auras that the Creator sent them to help Rand play out his destiny," replied Min. "There's a lot of problems out there. Rand ought to be claimed by one of them. At this rate, we'll never catch Nyaneve."

"It's alright," replied Aviendha. "My people are out there. There are maidens from many Aiel tribes. Ghoud Guiz tribe, the Justis tribe, the Protagoonists tribe and the Friundly Peeps tribe." Elayne nodded.

"And what's the name of the evil Aiel tribe?"

"The Baby-Haters. I mean, the Evil-Names. I mean, the Shaido. They're called the Shaido."

"Right. Just so long as none of those maidens of the spear sleep with Rand before I do, I'm fine," Elayne replied.

"I'm afraid I have a confession. I've had sex with Rand," Aviendha admitted. "I mean, it was a boring night and there was no one in the tent and I almost froze and stuff. But…yeah. So if either of you want to stab me for it," Aviendha drew a knife, "I'll let you." She turned to her friends.

"YOU WHA!"

Min and Elayne both had huge swords raised over their heads and were prepared to deliver a killing chop to Aviendha. Their faces were Nyaneve-level angry.

"Woah! I didn't mean it. It's supposed to show how noble and barbaric I am…"

"CHOP! CHOP! CHOP! CHOP!" both girls charged after Aviendha, who sprinted in terror outside. Both girls charged after her, swords waving. Rand came in a short while later, his arms extended to encompass the whole unit of maidens of the spear who had joined their cause.

'The greatest pimp of all scores again,' Rand thought. "Good news ladies!" Rand paused, glancing around. "Where's the other three?"

"Gone," Egwene explained what happened.

"No!" Rand loosed waves of tears from his eyes. "They killed Aviendha! She's joined the women who've died for me! No!" He took out his fat notebook, donned his bifocals and read off the names. "Jana Axeswinger! Lada Johnson! Havania Buttkicker! Lauraine Miske! Now Aviendha!"

"She hasn't died for you, sheepherder!" Egwene yelled.

…

_Sinto was a noble warrior. At age nine he was already beating people twice his age in sparring matches. At age fifteen he made his first kill. At age twenty-five, he fathered a beautiful baby girl, Mes, with his wife Thasan._

"_For the Dragon!" Sinto yelled as the next wave of trollocs charged. He fought desperately to save the caravan. Sinto fought until his spear broke, then fought with the sharp end of his spear. He was hewn by a trolloc and fell dying to the ground. Yet he did not allow himself to die until he saw the day was won. He smiled with bloody lips when the Dragon's flag rose in triumph over the caravan he had helped rescue._

"_Praise the Light," Sinto whispered. "I love you Thasan. I love you Mes." He died smiling._

_Days later, Thasan ran to the messenger sent to her village. The messenger delivered news of the men from her village who fought in the Dragon's army. Thasan was already wailing in grief halfway through the announcement of Sinto's death. She ran back to her cottage and held Mes in close. At three, Mes couldn't understand her mother's tears._

"_Daddy's in heaven," Thasan whispered through her warm tears to her previous child. "He won't be coming home." At those final words, little Mes finally understood. She hugged her mother and began to cry, begging her mother to explain why she couldn't see her father. _

_Back at the battlefield, the butcher's bill was being counted._

"_Bring it in!" shouted Rand. A noisy bulldozer rolled forward. Sinto's dead, smiling face was crushed under the pile of dead men that the bulldozer was messily driving into the landfill the survivors had dug. Rand flicked the ash from his cigar in after the corpses and watched in indifference as the dead things were buried in a hurry. Better to hide the smell. The hole was covered, but here and there a dead limb or face still stuck out of the dirt. Sinto's bones snapped like twigs as the bulldozer rolled over the corpses to compress them in better._

_Rand walked away from the pit. He felt teary, now that the dead had been counted. The men and their families could go to hell, but the women! The women!_

!THE WOMEN! 

"_Salah Tselna!" sobbed Rand as he rolled on the ground, cut himself, listened to emo music, wrote sad poetry and dyed his hair black. "Marah Issinel! Fenera Viex! Nashneya Viex!" And he just went on and on and on and on. _

_And on._

'_Why does he do that?' thought most of the readers._

…

"Oh, they haven't killed her?" Rand put away his razors but forgot about his bifocals. "Good. Where are they?"

"Rand!" bellowed the disembodied voice of the Creator, "go with one of the people I've sent!"

"Blood and ashes, it's Lews," snorted Rand.

"Blood and bloody ashes, you dinosaur!" replied the Creator. "And I'm not Lews!" Rand ignored the voice. He'd been taking medication to silence Lews' voice. It had worked, but was it starting up again?

"Lews is right," added Perrin, "it's 'blood and bloody ashes' now."

"I'm bringing it back," Rand replied. "Blood and ashes." He grinned when Aviendha, Elayne and Min came back inside. "What happened to you? I've got some more women to join our troupe," he said. Aviendha (who was in a shopping cart, chopped into pieces) nodded by rocking her decapitated head back and forth.

"The others," Aviendha's head replied as her body came back together. "I confessed. The night in the tent. I told them. Now they all want a turn." Elayne grabbed Rand and ran off with him. Perrin made a jealous noise.

"Elayne's going to get pregnant with Rand's kids. Twins," Min muttered. She looked at Aviendha, who was going to be pregnant with...was that four? Was that even possible? Suddenly, sleeping with Rand didn't sound very safe.

"Good thing you're alive," Perrin said to Aviendha, "I thought you were dead."

Then, Thom walked in.

"Thom!" cried Perrin in surprise. "I thought you were dead!" Thom shook his head.

"Takes more than that to stop a gleeman, though my leg is…ow," Thom replied.

Then, Morgase walked in.

"Morgase!" Perrin cried, "I thought you were dead!"

"Nope," replied Morgase. Beside her stood that really old lady who had been Elayne's nurse who followed Morgase like seagulls followed a fishing boat. Frick, what was her name again?

…

"Uh..." the Creator was hammering his head against a wall, trying to remember her name. This was not good. The Creator was losing track of things. He referred to his gigantic pile of notes.

…

"No, my queen is not dead," the nurse, Lini, replied. "_The chickens come back to roost," _she said in a voice one used when trying to quote someone.

"Rand's totally nailing your daughter," Perrin muttered. Morgase didn't hear, but the Lini.

"Young people these days," Lini rolled her eyes. "_The glass turtle does not drive race cars,_" she said in that same I'm-quoting-someone-and-being-wise voice.

"Huh?" asked Egwene, but was stopped as someone else came in. "Lanfear?" Egwene asked as a man named Aran'gar (who was clearly the dead Forsaken in a new body) came in. "You're dead!"

"I cannot die," Aran'gar hissed.

Another person came in.

"Asmodean?" asked Egwene. "You're dead. Rahvin killed you!"

"But Rand balefired him," Asmodean replied. "I came back."

Another person came in.

"Aginor?" asked Perrin, "YOU'RE dead!"

"Brought back by the shadow, biyatch" said the Forsaken, now in a woman's body named Oran'gar.

Another person walked in.

"Tassadar?" asked Perrin. "YOU'RE dead!"

"I've never tasted death," said the protoss hero.

Another person walked in.

"Captain Hector Barbossa!" cried Aviendha, "YOU'RE dead!"

"Where's the Black Pearl? YArrrrrr!" Barbossa asked.

Another person walked in.

"Gandalf!" cried Egwene, "YOU'RE dead!"

"I hath passed through fire and death battling the balrog of Morgoth," Gandalf replied.

Another person walked in.

"Darth Maul?" cried Aviendha, "YOU'RE dead!"

"I survived, narrowly. Now I am driven by rage," Darth Maul hissed.

Another person walked in.

"Bobby Ewing?" cried Perrin. "YOU'RE DEAD!"

"It was all a dream. I'm right here," Bobby said as he stood in the shower.

Another person walked in

"STOP!" cried Egwene, "STOP! Stop! Stop! Just, stop." All but Aran'gar and Oran'gar faded like mist. "No more bringing people back to life en mass. It's giving me a headache." She stormed outside, her friends and the two forsaken following her. She pushed past the throngs of people, all crying to her about their problems.

"Egwene! The whitecloaks are in Two Rivers!"

"Egwene! There's four armies marching on Camylin."

"Egwene! There's civil war in…"

"…rebellion in…"

It was overwhelming. Someone obviously didn't want them to be here in the White Tower.

"Wait a minute," Egwene turned around. Oran'gar and Aran'gar were still there.

"The shadow has reached Tar Valon," hissed Oran'gar. "Tar Valon will burn! HAHAHAHAH!" Egwene kept walking. "Hey, where ya going?"

"Off to fight the shadow." Aran'gar stomped his…her…his/her foot.

"We're the chosen, hello?"

"I can't be bothered to have another pushover with the failsaken," Egwene said over her shoulder.

…

Shai'tan grinned as he led his army out of the Ways. At long last, here they were, outside of Tar Valon. Beside him, the dreadlords rode their horses. All around him marched a bazillion-gajillion shadowspawn. The fades just ended a session of their blindness support group and were now heading out to take command of their troops. In the sky flew squadrons of drakghar, who made ominous droning sounds and painted iron crosses on their wings and swastikas on their tails.

Shai'tan looked at the screen of the Laptop of Doom. He had his browser open to his Facebook profile, which used his nickname "the Dark One".

"My supporters are numerous," Shai'tan said as he regarded his lengthy friends list. Yes, the dark friends were legion. When the shadow attacked, he could use them. He noticed the status of one of his dark friends.

"Dargle Donitz is being eaten by trollocs," it read.

Okay, he'd better hurry up.

"So saidin is cleansed," Shai'tan began to his dreadlords, "not to worry though. We can still win this."

"What is it now?" asked one of the dreadlords.

"We need to wait for my dark friends on the inside to undermine Tar Valon's defenses. Once they're down, we storm in."

"Agreed."

"The dark friends will open the gate. The first wave of trollocs will storm in through the gate, engage the defenders, and get slaughtered. Then, the draghkar squadrons will drop their bombs on the White Tower and get blown out of the sky. If all goes well, our assaults on the walls will be repelled with heavy casualties." When fighting for the evil faction in a swords and sorcery fantasy setting, such results were the best one could hope for.

"Very well. You thought of that? Death rages. I hunger. Die." the dreadlords said. Shai'tan snarled.

"Don't you dreadlords ever make sense?" asked Shai'tan.

"Agreed." Shai'tan had to avert his eyes from the brightness of their vampiric auras.

"Shadowspawn! Attack!" Shai'tan roared.

With a collective roar, the trollocs and fades charged. Ferocious warriors, in the hundred thousand, darkened the fields, throwing dust into the air with their charge. Their weapons waved, their smoky banners flapped, their voices drowned out all other sounds. Their charge was as unstoppable as death.

Shai'tan facepalmed.

"Other way," he murmured.

The shadowspawn stopped and looked over their shoulders…to the walls of Tar Valon.

With a collective roar, the trollocs and fades turned around and charged the city.

…

The Creator cried out as a heap of piled notes fell off his desk and onto him. Struggling under the oceans of notes on what was going on, the Creator fought to keep his head above the surface of the paper ocean.

"So much stuff!" the Creator cried in dismay. The Dark One was already outside Tar Valon, but the heroes were not in the proper places. The Creator had brought too much into the story when he'd tried to stop Nyaneve. Right now, everyone was distracted with Rand, instead of going after Nyaneve. "So much stuff! What's going on?"

The Creator no longer understood his own story. There was just…too…much…TOO…MUCH!

"What have I done!" cried the Creator as he treaded the lake of piled notes that threatened to drown him, trying to escape. It was hopeless. He'd just have to…

"YAH!"

The Creator sent a shockwave of force out from his body that blew the notes off him. The shockwave reverberated through the Great Wheel.

…

"YAH!"

The shockwave knocked Mat onto his back. He shrieked as the boundaries of time grew thin for him and all the memories of his past lives flooded his mind.

…

"YAH!"

Oran'gar was shaken off his feet. Being a failsaken, he fell over and broke his neck. Aran'gar remained alive as the shockwave shook the room.

"Put a lid on in Perrin," Egwene said, trying to keep on her feet as the tower shook.

"I'm not doing it," Perrin replied.

…

"YAH!"

Rand and Elayne crouched together in the storage closet as the building shook. Papers rattled in their binders. The globe that sat atop the table in the closet shook.

"The prophecies of the Dragon mention this?" Elayne asked.

"Yes," Rand replied, "_And there shall be a great shaking and the earth shall heave and this shall be the harbinger of the Dragon knocking up the daughter-heir of Andor, Elayne Trakand._" Elayne was impressed at his knowledge of the prophecies. Rand smirked on the inside. He made that up as he went along. In fact, the entire prophecy was a fabrication he'd written to get what he wanted.

The ground stopped shaking.

"Now, let's make out," Rand turned around, but his hand accidentally hit the globe on the table. It shook, teetered, fell and exploded into glassy shards on the ground. Elayne groaned.

"Good job Rand, you _broke_ the world," she scolded. Rand hushed her when the sound of Blight war trumpets echoed through the walls. The shadowspawn army was here!

"Right, I gotta do dragon-stuff," Rand said. "Wish I could stay, but that reminded me, I gotta go kick Nyaneve's butt." He left, closing the door behind him. Elayne grumbled and turned the knob to go after him.

CLICK.

The door was locked.

Elayne pounded on the door. Nothing.

"Hello?" she shouted. "Hello?"

…

"Dude?" asked Lan as Mat writhed around on the ground of the white tower archive, eyes closed.

"It certainly sounds like it," Nyaneve replied as she stood over Mat. "Let's hear what battles he was in."

"Into Stalingrad! The communists will burn in their own homes!" Mat cried to no one. He convulsed and shook. "The white man calls that place Rorke's Drift. We will cover it in his blood!" Mat yawned. "The English are outnumbered. We will make Agincourt their graves! Attack!" Mat snorted in his stupor. "Charge! Make it so the world will know our Confederate victory whenever people speak of Pickett's Charge," Mat coughed. "Here at Marathon we will kill the Greeks!" Mat moaned. "Romans! Here at Cannae we defeat Hannibal!" Mat shook, as if being trampled by a s'redit. "The savages are simple, and here at Little Bighorn I, General Custer, will prove it."

"Custer?" asked Nyaneve, "so Mat was a general." So many battles too. Nyaneve wondered in awe the glory and triumph Mat must have won. There were so many. Mat's side must have won at least one of them.

"We counted thirty rebel ships, but they're so small they're evading our turbo lasers," Mat muttered. "Humans are going to invade us. Send all our orcs, ALL OF THEM, to the Black Gate." Mat coughed, then opened his eyes.

"Nyaneve, Lan, where is my Red Band?" Mat asked. "The shadowspawn are coming. Here, in Tar Valon, we will destroy them all. Will you join me?" Knowing the great military triumphs Mat must have had, Nyaneve enthusiastically agreed.

"Hold off the shadow while I find the Black Ajah," she instructed.


End file.
